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Scottish seed potato merchants who supply the UK horticultural market with top quality seed to grow in their gardens or allotments. We supply garden centres and allotment societies aswell as selling direct to the public.

Sunday 22 March 2009

Busy day in the greenhouse

Hard at work today preparing my peat for planting my exhibition seed potatoes. I put my peat through a shredder and add 16oz of Vitax Q4 qnd 12oz of calcified seaweed to the mix as it comes out of the shredder. I have 17litre polypots that I fill with this mixture and I use a white marker pen to write the name of the variety on the bag. I leave the mix for a week then I put my chitted potatoes into the bags. I leave just the 2 strongest chits on the potato and remove all the rose end chits with a sharp knife.
I hope to make it to a few shows this year and have a small display of potatoes for people to view. Does anyone else grow to show?

Saturday 21 March 2009

Hello Followers

What are you all upto today then?
Are you all out in your garden enjoying the sunshine?
It is dull and overcast here with fog.
I am going to plant some potatoes in polypots this afternoon and leave in the greenhouse.

Monday 16 March 2009

New seed potato varieties listed

The Jamieson Brothers website has had 8 more varieties added to the maincrop section. Many of these are only for sale on our website so take at look at NEW varieties added.
We have also added a new section for heritage mini-tubers. These mini-tubers are totally disease free and are what we professionals use to produce our high grade seed.

Planting instructions on youtube

This weekend I put together some simple videos about how to plant your potatoes in containers.
You can watch it here at potatospecialist and see how we plant our seed potatoes in the fields for you to enjoy.

Tuesday 10 March 2009

JBA website updated

Today we have updated and remodelled the website to make it easier for everyone to use and navigate on. Ou pages have been merged into one page for each section and all stock has been updated. Take a look at www.jbaseedpotatoes.co.uk to see what I mean.

Sunday 8 March 2009

Potato Weekend Success

Jamieson Brothers potato weekend at Garden wise garden centre in Dumfries has been a huge success. We had 500 people through the doors on Saturday and today we had just over 600 which shows the demand for grow your own potatoes. We hope to hold the same event at Garden wise next year and have over 100 varieties for sale over the weekend.
Our vintage varieties were in great demand with many of them selling out within an hour.
Let us hope that we have a nice summer and that everyones potatoes grow well.

Tuesday 3 March 2009

Planting Potatoes in Containers

As the planting season approaches I thought I would give you a quick guide to how I would grow potatoes in containers.What you will need-
3/5 seed potatoes
A container
Multi-purpose compost
45grams of fertilizer from any good garden store for each container.

Start off by using a clean container and mix your fertilizer into the compost you are going to use. Most containers will be 30-40 litres for this guide if they are bigger add 15grams of fertilizer to every 10litres of compost.Now simply fill the bottom 4 inches of your container with your newly mixed compost and add your potatoes to it.
Try and evenly space your potatoes out in the container and gently push them half way in.Add a further 2 inches of compost ontop of the potatoes so that they are nicely covered.
Now comes the shocking part DO NOT water them for a week!!Yes I can hear you saying that I am crazy but the compost will contain moisture and what we want is the root system to go down into the bottom 4 inches and establish a good root system. Watering straight away will encourage the roots to go up the way.
Watering is key with potatoes and a small amount every day is better than a big amount once a week. Never saturate the compost as this will do more harm than good. Moist is the key word here.As the potatoes grow and the shoots appear simply keep adding more of you pre-mixed compost to your container to cover the potatoes but allow the shoots to grow by not adding too much compost and cause compaction.
The main thing to avoid is compacting the compost as this will slow the growth of the potatoes as you will create unhealthy anaerobic conditions.
Your average first early will be ready in 9 weeks in ideal conditions.
I think that should cover it for you.
I will make a video soon for you all to watch

Sunday 1 March 2009

Potato Days

Well I went to my first potato day at Kelso which was run by the Border Organic club.
I had given them a supply of my own unique vintage potatoes and they all were sold out in less than an hour so I was happy with the result. I bought a few tubers of unusual varieties to try myself in some of my grower bags to see if they would be worthy of adding to my stock list.
I also had a great chat with Alan Romans and he will be coming down to see us very soon. The last time I met Alan I was only knee high to a grass hopper and we were filling his car and trailer with our potatoes for him to take back up the road.

We are having our own potato day at Garden wise of Dumfries on Saturday the 7th and Sunday the 8th of March where there will be 50 varieties to buy by the tuber so feel free to come along and enjoy the day with us and ask any questions you might have.