A Swarm in May is worth a load of hay. But 19 swarms...!!!!!

Be sure to watch this amazzzing video of bees marching into their new hive. I can't believed I kept the phone so steady, especially with bees crashing into the screen!

This is the longest I've ever been without posting on my blog. There's nothing going on, it's just a reflection of just how incredibly busy we have been on the smallholding.

With the help of some volunteers the veg plot has been transformed. The poultry and sheep have not caused too many concerns, though an overnight rat attack on the ducklings was unpleasant to deal with.

But really it has been all about the bees. 19 swarms in 19 days!

We started May with 6 hives, though one contained only the remnants of a queenless colony. The first swarm occurred on 8th May and came from hive number 5. At this stage a swarm was still quite a novelty for us as we would only expect to come across one or two in a year. In fact Sue had never actually seen the bees swarm before this year, as they had an uncanny habit of avoiding weekends and usually waiting until she was away on headteachers conference.

An early swarm... little did we know what was to come

Since then all hell has let loose. We have had swarms from our hives, swarms coming in from elsewhere and even our bees pouring out of the hive to investigate other swarms, only to return to their own hive.

The bees have been pretty grouchy too. Working in the veg garden after about 11am has been a risky business. So much so that the decision has been taken to move the apiary down into the orchard. Hopefully most of the swarming is now over. Our bees certainly seem a lot more settled and kamikaze bees diving straight into your hair has become less than a daily event.


The overall result is that we now have NINE busy hives, including a new apiary down in the orchard.
I have been busy building new frames, brood boxes, rooves etc but we still had to give away three swarms as we ran out of spare hives to home them.

Most amazing has been our adoption of the marching in method of rehoming a swarm. For those who aren't familiar with bee-keeping, here's a quick description of the whole swarming and collection process:

Photos appear completely haphazardly due to Blogger making it virtually impossible to drop them where you want!

Swarming is a natural process which occurs when a colony of bees reaches capacity in its current home. It is their way of spreading and colonising. Before the swarm event, the bees start turning normal brood cells into queen cells, which appear completely different to the others. From these cells will hatch virgin queens, one of whom is destined to stay in the hive and begin a whole new generation of bees. On the day of swarming, usually a warm, sultry day, the old queen and about half the hive leave. They have filled up on honey before their departure. You can hear them inside the hive before they go. They then swirl around outside the hive and spread out over the garden. Eventually they start to congregate in one area, where the queen has settled, and after about twenty minutes they will have clustered into a protective ball around the queen. This is usually not too far from the hive they left.

At this point they are quite peaceful. I have walked right past them without even noticing them.

Sometimes they will remain in this cluster for up to a couple of days - one of my swarms got drenched overnight but was still able to be collected the next evening. On other occasions they quickly depart and head over the fields, gone forever. For they have sent out scouts to find a new home. This is a good time to observe their waggle dancing, as bees return to the swarm and communicate with the others in this amazing way, spinning, turning and shaking their bums!

This year has been a phenomenal year for swarms. It is still early in the season but the bee-keeping companies are working from 6am and have long back orders on hive parts. Goodness knows what is going on.
I do not see how all these swarms can be finding homes in a landscape devoid of natural cavities which would be suitable.

So you have a swarm settle in you garden. Typically they will be in a hedge or hanging from a branch. There are two ways to collect them. Ideally you can just snip the branch and the whole lot drop into a box. If you get the queen, they will stay in there and any that took to the air will find her too.
It's not always this easy though. Sometimes you have to give the branch a quick and violent shake so that the swarm falls into your box. This usually results in slightly more disturbance. Occasionally the queen remains on the branch and the whole lot return to her!

Once you've got the swarm in a box - nothing fancy, just a strong cardboard box is sufficient, you need to transfer them into a hive, assuming you have a spare one ready, and persuade them to stay in the nice new home you have created for them.
We always rub lemon balm leaves all over the frames inside the hive. Lemon balm is also known as bee balm and seems to be irresistible to our little friends. Before we did this, we would usually find our swarms departed the next morning.

To transfer the bees from your cardboard box to the hive there are two methods. You can tip them in the top and shut the lid. This is obviously quite disturbing for them and results in clouds of angry bees. It does usually work though.



But the second method is the one we have adopted this year. You construct a ramp in front of the hive you want them to move into. For some reason it is better if it is white, or we lay light fabric over the top. You then tip the bees onto this ramp and hope. What follows is astonishing.

The bees start marching up the ramp into the hive of their own accord. Some stand outside the hive, anchor themselves to the ground and fan the pheromones from the queen toward the swarm so they know which way to go.
Within half an hour most of the procession of bees is inside the hive. By the evening all of the stragglers are in.
We have now done this five times. There were a couple of glitches. One time the queen obviously stayed lodged in the corner of the box so they all marched the wrong way! I just shook them out again and it worked at the second time of asking.
Another time everything went smoothly until, a couple of hours later, I found the whole swarm back where I had collected them and the hive completely empty. It is just possible I had missed the queen when I collected them, or for some reason they didn't like the hive I had provided. I just rubbed more lemon balm inside the hive and collected the swarm again. I cut the remaining twigs to make sure there was nothing, queen or pheromones, to attract them back again. Four days later they are still in the hive.

During all of this, I have only picked up three stings. Two harmless on the head, but one full-on sting on the hand which swelled instantly and by the next day had my whole hand and lower arm double its normal size. Uncomfortable but nothing to worry about. It was my own fault. I decided to wear thinner gloves than normal whilst collecting a swarm in order to be able to use my phone to record the event. Not a wise move!

And now we head into June.
A swarm in June is worth a silver spoon.

Looking further forward
A swarm in July is worth not a fly!

Swallows and Lambathons

The first swallow soaks up the early morning sun

There is excited chattering above the smallholding once more.

Yay! The swallows have returned. And with temperatures already having reached 24C there should be plenty of insects for them.
That was Sue's wake up surprise for me on Wednesday.

Thursday's surprise was that we have our fourth lamb, an adorable all black single ewe. She was the offspring of badger-face number 00009. This ewe always drops her sprogs without warning.



So the lambathon bit of the blog title is a bit (well a lot) misleading. We have had four lambs - oh, did I forget to tell you about the twins born two days previously to Number 0001.

All are doing well. All were born with no problems for mums or babies. There are three girls and one boy which is a very good ratio. They were all born within our Easter holidays, as planned.


And that's about it.

Oh. They are adorable as ever!

Chips with Everything ... and Mulch Mulch More

The turkey survived and recovered. I have blocked the offending gap between door and fence panel so she can no longer poke her head through and get stuck.

Before I continue on the main subject, here's a parasol mushroom I happened across today. Incredibly by late afternoon it was withered up and gone.

And here's a lovely picture of Gerry with his head in some catnip.

The new chipper / shredder has proved so popular that I have hardly seen Sue. She has slowly chewed her way through piles of thorny hedge trimmings, prickly roses, willow cuttings... In fact if you stay in one place too long you are likely to be picked up and thrown down the chute!

We have plenty of use for the chippings.

Firstly there is the comfrey patch. Last year's duck destruction meant that for once the comfrey was outcompeted by the grass. It is just poking back through again so a thick layer of mulch chippings will redress the balance.

It won't be long before the comfrey comes through and shades out the grass.

The chippings will give it a helping hand though.

The perennial beds suffer from grass incursion too, so a good few wheelbarrowfuls have gone into there.

And finally I laid fabric protection down for the new willow holt but I used cheap stuff, mainly because I don't like the plastic membrane which leaves long threads of unbreakable plastic in the environment. However the new stuff is thin and the grass has already started poking through. It does half the job, but is really designed to take a mulch - which is exactly what most of it now has. A mixture of grass clippings - a most convenient way of disposing of these right at source - and wood chip has been deployed to make sure the willow cuttings get a good start in life.

In fact mulching is the name of the game this year. But it is important to carefully select what you use to cover the ground and smother the weeds.
For the blackcurrant bushes, it was the bedding from the goose stables since they require a heavy injection of nitrogen.

Blackberries appreciating a heavy feed

The chicken escape committee

have decided that the paths should be mulched

as well as the raspberry beds.

It's easier just to go along with them.

For the raspberries it is grass clippings. Again it is a handy place to empty the mower. The mulch smothers the weeds, especially the invading grass and rots down to feed the soil. It saves hours of weeding in between raspberry canes.

The last two mulches I mentioned, straw and grass clippings, are also ideal for slugs. If I used them on my vegetable patch there would be no vegetables left, even with the help of the duck squad. But soft fruits seem largely unaffected by slugs and the ducks will keep the numbers sufficiently down so this wont become a hotbed of terrorist slugs making nightly incursions into the neighbouring vegetables.

For the vegetables I am mulching instead with compost. The weed-smothering action should again save hours of hands and knees weeding while at the same time the worms, newly encouraged by my no-dig regime, incorporate this black gold into the soil. The mulch will conserve moisture too and feed the plants.

The only problem is producing sufficient quantities of compost to cover all the beds. so I make sure that every single compostable piece of waste makes it onto the heaps. More than that though, I am growing short rotation willow to chip and bulk up the compost heaps. The sheep appreciate stripping the leaves and bark first and the extra supplement they get from this is worth losing a little compost material.
I also have, at great expense, a hundred rhizomes of elephant grass arriving soon. This is a non-invasive variety which is grown commercially to feed biomass energy systems. But I will be using the biomass to bulk up the compost.

If all goes well, we will have mountains of compost. My only worry is that we have too much carbon content and not enough nitrogen content for the compost to rot down sufficiently quickly, but hopefully the weekly addition of old chicken bedding will solve that one.

Smallholding - because it's worth it

Today was everything that smallholding should be.
It started with Sue letting the poultry out and doing the morning feed while I finished off some rather rustic protection for my broad bean bed. I wanted to finish this before the escape committee got into the veg beds and scratched up all the Poached Egg seedlings I planted last night to look after the broad beans.

We started early, for the plasterers were due to arrive at 8.30am. We need some remedial work doing in two downstairs rooms, so we shall be spending the next few days in improvised living quarters squeezed between all the furniture which now fills one end of the kitchen and the conservatory (aka the potting shed).

The dogs are quite happy with the new living arrangements

We have been trying to arrange to have this work done for well over a year and have come to the conclusion that plasterers easily beat estate agents. lawyers and even politicians in the charlatan stakes! Not the one we are using I hasten to add. So it will be a great relief to finally get this work done.

Once it is all finished we will be repainting and turning one of the rooms from a bedroom into a communal room for our next exciting plan, hosting volunteers on the smallholding.

We have our first volunteer coming to stay at the end of this month and it now all seems very real.

With the plasterers set to their work, it was back into the garden where I was preparing the bed for some pea seedlings  to grow. Meanwhile Sue was busy with the new chipper shredder which I finally got round to using at the back end of last week (I am scared of power machinery and it often sits quite a while before I pluck up the courage to use it).

Sue was so enthusiastic about this new machine that she totally didn't notice the arrival of our next guests.

And so to our second appointment of the day with the caravan man. We bought a caravan off Facebook a while back in preparation for this venture to give the volunteers a space of their own but had not really worked out all the practicalities of actually using the caravan. But it was all good news. Solar energy won't be a problem, we can use a big gas bottle to power most of the appliances and the caravan man was quite impressed with the caravan.
Not only this, but he is going to look out for a second caravan for us. We don't do things by halves.

It wasn't yet midday but the weather somewhat reflected our day so far - a very foggy start had turned into a gloriously sunny day. All five bee hives came out to make the most of it too.

Sue and I busied ourselves on the smallholding until Sue decided to go into town to stock up for visitors coming later in the week. That plus the fact that the plasterers were getting through quite a lot of coffees and we needed more milk! (We don't yet have a cow)

But Sue's shopping trip was cut short.

I picked some old cabbages and took them down to the ram paddock - the six boys are being very laddish at the moment, full of the joys of spring. They spend most of their time chasing and leaping and butting.


But it was the ewes which caught my attention. One was lying by the hay feeder looking decidedly close to labour, but then I looked at the other of the fat girls to see her water bag hanging out the back. Lambing was upon us!
I don't want to boast, but this was perfect planning. We try to introduce the ram so that lambing happens during our Easter holiday and this was just about perfect timing.

I called Sue to come back in case assistance was required, but ten minutes later I was WhatsApping her a photo of the newborn lamb.
I would have put my life's savings on this ewe having twins but I was wrong. Instead it was one very sturdy ewe lamb.

All the other sheep came over to introduce themselves, but it was the other heavily laden ewe's behaviour which was interesting. She licked the lamb just as if she were its mother and spent the next couple of hours trying to adopt it. Fortunately the lamb, although occasionally confused, bonded with the right mum and was doing all the right things to get its first feed.

For now we have brought mum and lamb and heavily pregnant aunty up to the stable. There was a chilly north-easterly blowing this afternoon and it is easier for us to keep an eye on things if the sheep are inside. I'm sure they would rather be outside though.

So that was pretty much the day done. Just about the perfect smallholding day.

But it's never that straightforward. A strange noise mid afternoon turned out to be one of the turkeys with its head stuck in the gap between the gate and the heras fencing panel. This has never happened before and fortunately the girl managed to free herself when I approached. But half an hour later I heard the same noise with the same result. This time the stupid turkey appeared to injure its neck in its efforts to free itself.
It is now looking pretty sorry for itself. Whether it survives the night or not I wouldn't like to bet.

And there you have it. The many highs (and occasional lows) of smallholding.
I'm sure that with more lambing there will be plenty more ups and downs in the next couple of weeks.

No dig gets off the ground

The Easter holiday comes as an annual life saver for me. It is a chance to catch up with everything (including writing my blog!!!).

For once I am actually pretty well on top of everything at the moment. There is a steady flow of seed propagation from the conservatory to the polytunnel. The basic rule is that once the conservatory is full, whichever tray of seeds is most advanced goes out into the polytunnel.

From there, hardier seedlings go into the coldframe before being planted out.

The no dig beds are taking shape - it really is bringing an exciting freshness to my growing. Already I have broad beans, onions, shallots, garlic and parsnips in the ground, as well as half of my potatoes. 

I am trying quite a few new crops this year, at the forefront of which are Spinach Rubino and Bull's Blood Beetroot, whose seedings are already in the gorund under fleece alongside mixed lettuces. With regular picking these should provide a steady flow of mixed salad leaves well into the summer months.

One major problem with no dig is that nobody sent the memo to the chicken escape committee. Cocky and the two Cream Legbar girls jump the fence every morning and spend the day looking for freshly laid compost mulch to shift. Even better if this involves dislodging a few onion sets or freshly planted seedlings.

A few rustic sticks and some old scaffold netting protect the young broad bean plants

This has necessitated a little more crop protection than usual. I'm sure after I've chased them off a few more times and lobbed a few more clods of soil in their general direction that they will give up with their vandalising behaviour and find somewhere else to hang out.

The new ducks on the other hand are much more considerate, spending most of the day hoovering for slugs. They even stick mostly to the paths.

Parsnips - the low down

Parsnip basics

• The seeds are like miniature paper plates, so don't sow on a windy day!
• There are many varieties. They all taste like, well, parsnips! I go for Tender 'n' True. It's cheap, no frills and does the job. I've tried other varieties and found no real improvement.
• The seeds are slow to germinate, so make sure the ground stays well-weeded or you'll lose the parsnip seedlings when they finally emerge.
• The seeds only stay viable for a year. Any longer and you'll have a high failure rate.
• You can sow parsnips much earlier than most other seeds, but there's not much point bolting the gun too early. You won't be needing a harvest until after next year's frosts anyway. No seed enjoys trying to germinate in cold, wet soil. 

• When you've done all that, don't forget to thin out your seedlings. I completely neglected my parsnips last year and as a consequence I now have lots of very puny parsnips. Schoolboy error!
• Parsnips are at their sweetest after the first frosts.
• Parsnips will stand in the ground all winter. No need to lift and store, though you may struggle to get them out if the ground is frozen.
• Parsnips have very few enemies, but they can attract carrot fly. However the damage is never anywhere near as severe as can happen in carrots.

• Leave some parsnips unharvested and they will grow into majestic plants next year.
• When they flower in their second year they are an invaluable attraction to hoverflies, which are excellent predators for all sorts of bugs which you don't want in your veg garden. In my trail last year, my collected seed fared much, much better than two year old bought seed.
• You can collect the seeds from these plants and use them next year. This way you never need to buy parsnip seed again.

What it looks like on the ground
Yesterday I harvested some of my puny parsnips. I will leave some unharvested to grow and flower this year.

The sign says Parsnips, the plants say garlic.

But there will be parsnips... eventually.

And today I sowed this year's seed. It is going between rows of garlic which as you can see has already grown well after I planted the cloves back in January. I find these two plants to make very good companions, and the garlic will be out of the ground and harvested before the parsnip plants grow big.

Another lesson I learned today - don't store your collected seed up on top of a bookcase with no lid on - mice will find it. Luckily my parsnip seeds were lidded, but I can't say the same for the fennel or coriander, which have been greedily devoured, just husks and mouse poo left as evidence!

More new ducks

There has been a bit of a duck changeover on the smallholding. The Pekin ducks had grown into brutes, just trampling right over the netting I erected to protect my vegetables.

They had to go!

But ducks are an integral part of my slug control. So I turned to the interweb, typing in "best ducks for a vegetable plot".

The overwhelming winning breed was Khaki Campbells.

I hadn't realised that most Khaki Campbells actually reside in the West of Britain, but it didn't take me too long to locate an advert from over this side of the country.

In fact they were on a smallholding down near Lakenheath, along a road which I used to visit to see Britain's last remnant population of Golden Orioles. Sadly they have gone now.

We took the chance to take the dogs on an adventure, walking them along the river at Santon Downham. This stretch of river has otters and Lesser Spotted Woodpeckers but alas we didn't see either.

Onto the smallholding and there were about 80 Khaki Campbells to choose from, all ducks. They were in muddy conditions and it was all a bit smelly! They weren't tame either so we just took the first three we could catch. Fortunately nobody ended up face down in the mud!



Khaki Campbells are a small breed of duck. They are not fancy, but hopefully will do their job well in the veg plot without causing too much destruction. Here they are on their first day, desperate to hide away in their new house.

ed     A couple of weeks have passed now. The Khakis didn't come out of their house for a day or two and I eventually had to eject them. Then I had to fish them out of the pond as their feathers weren't in a good enough state to repel the water.
But they have now settled in, made friends with the two old ducks we have, and are enjoying life in the veg plot. Their feathers have improved so they can now use the pond. They have started laying eggs for us too.

Meanwhile we managed to sell four of the five Pekin ducks. Unluckily for him, the buyers didn't want a drake so he is soon destined for the table. The four females had just started laying whopping great eggs, so they were a good buy. They have gone to a smallholding where the owners do B&B so lots of people will get to enjoy them.

From the Himalayas to Shetland

Wondering where I've been for a while?

Here.



Makes a change from The Fens!
It's the third time I've visited this area of Northern India for birdwatching, which was very nice as I'd seen most of the bird species before and was more able to focus on enjoying them rather than chasing new ticks.

But a conversation in the middle of the holiday had me seriously twitchy.
We had just discovered that after four days of no phone data we could hitch a ride on the WiFi of another hotel in the mountain village. With our newfound contact with the outside world, the conversation went something like this:
Rob: There's a Scops Owl on Orkney
Me (after mulling this over for a while): What's a Scops Owl doing in Britain at this time of year? Where is it?
Rob: Bixter
Me: Isn't that on Shetland?
Rob: Oh, it's not a Scops Owl, it's a Tengmalm's
Me: TENGMALM'S ***!!!**???***!!!

This news didn't spoil my holiday, but it did have me thinking about what to do when I got back to the UK. As the days went on I went from deciding not to go at all to looking up flights for the end of the week after I got back. I would need to put a few days of work in first.

We flew back on the Monday, arriving back on the farm at about 9pm, my body clock on 2.30 in the morning.

I went to work on the Tuesday but crumbled and ended up driving to Aberdeen on Tuesday night for an early morning flight onto Shetland.

By Wednesday morning I was watching a Tengmalm's Owl.

The garden where the Tengmalm's Owl eventually settled for a few days.

Highly nocturnal, the owl needed refinding every morning as it changed it's chosen roost tree.

This made it even more important to make the pilgrimage before the twitch tailed off - numbers were needed. 

Spot The Owl - It took some finding in such a large garden

Every now and then a bird arrives which really gets the twitching juices flowing. Hugely rare, a checkered history which meant just about every birder in Britain still needed it, an owl and a fantastic location in Shetland.

What a start to the year.

Chocolate Duck Makes Bid For Freedom

A while back one of our Muscovy ducks mysteriously disappeared. It was about the same time as we lost our drake Cayuga duck. Whether it was a natural predator or they fell victim to wandering too far and didn't realise that not everybody's dogs are duck-friendly I do not know.
Anyway, there is no happy ending. There is no surprise reappearance a few weeks later.

A new chocolate Muscovy duck

This left us with our drake Muscovy and two females. As well as their eggs, the Muscovies give us birds for the table as each year we hatch some out under broody hens. Their meat is just about the tastiest of any animal, bird or mammal, that we keep.

So when a friend said they were thinning down their Muscovy flock I decided to replace the chocolate brown girl we had lost. Sue picked her up late one Saturday afternoon and when we got her home we put her straight into her own house in the chicken pen overnight. The hope was that in the morning she would emerge, meet the other Muscovies and hang about with them.
But no!
She flew straight over the fence, into the field and then across the road. The first I knew of this was Sue waking me up to come and retrieve her.

I seriously thought we had no chance. Muscovy ducks are very strong fliers and one more flight would take her too far away. If she got on the pond at the end of the track opposite we would have no chance of getting her.

Fortunately the ground was solid so we could skirt right around the field and approach her from the other side. She flew straight back over the road.
More careful approach and she started heading back toward the farm. I kept just far enough away to encourage her to keep moving without spooking her into flight. The smallholding she came from did not offer her the opportunity to fly freely so her wings were now tired from the novel experience of her long flights. But it was going to be a long waddle across the field, over the dyke and back onto the smallholding.

We eventually got there and I managed to persuade her to go into the cage with the Silkie hens.

Next stage of the plan was to move a couple of the other Muscovies in there with her so she could make friends with them and hopefully learn the ways of our smallholding.


After several nights refusing to go into a house, she has finally learned from the others and follows one of them in at night. She has also learned not to panic when we go into the cage. We'll leave it another couple of weeks before she gets another taste of unfenced freedom.

Know Your Onions - Get Ready, Get Sets, Go!

Every year I go to Limmings in Holbeach and I purchase one bag of Red Baron onion sets, one bag of Stuttgarter onion sets and one bag of Sturon onion sets. Put simply, sets are miniature onions which grow into big onions.
This gives me a whole bed full of onions. They are simple to grow - just plonk them in the ground about mid March and keep them weeded. That's it. The worst problem I have ever encountered is a few of the onions bolting if the weather is warm and dry.

This year however Limmings has shut down. I could still hunt around for onion sets in other shops but it seems like a good time to try something different.

So this year I have ordered onion seeds.
The advantage is that many more varieties are available. Also they apparently are capable of growing to a larger size than those started from sets as long as they are started early.

I have six packets - Red Onion Brunswick, Stuttgarter, Sturon, Globo, Sweet Spanish Yellow and Long Red Florence. I have a lot to learn. I do know that they need to be started quite early. I also know that they can be multisown in modules and planted out in groups.



So last night I sowed 6 trays of onions. We will see what happens throughout the year.

Just in case things go wrong, I have also purchased a small amount of onion sets which were on sale as part of the Potato Day last week.

I also sowed my first rows of carrots in the polytunnel today and half a row of turnips.

Things are starting to move.

Potato day 2019

While heavy snow hit almost all the rest of the country, here in our little piece of fenland we managed to all but avoid it. But with the ground frozen for a couple of weeks it has slowed my progress in the veg plot.



That is though what the seasons are all about. As a smallholder you work with the weather patterns. We don't get snow all winter, but a week or two of freezing temperatures and the odd covering of the white stuff is what we should expect.
Anyway, I am glad we didn't get a lot of snow for it somehow has the capacity to make the ground even sludgier than a downfall of rain.

Saturday 2nd February was Potato Day, an annual event held by Cambridgeshire Self-Sufficiency Group.
For the last few years I have helped set up, getting lots and lots of potato varieties out of a van and laid out in neat order on tables. The event is held in Huntingdon but the venue has changed several times. For now it has settled into a fantastic old church in the very centre of town.
It surely has to be one of the most glamorous venues for a potato day.

As is usual I like to arrive early, get set up, purchase my year's supply of seed potatoes and get out before the place is full of Joe (and Jane) public.

There are over 40 varieties of potato to choose from. We used to have even more, but some of the more unusual types don't sell well enough to be worth buying in. They are just £1/kilo for members of the group, £1.30 for non members.
It is a great opportunity to experiment with new varieties. One year somebody bought one of each just so they could compare yields, taste and uses.

With so many types of potato on sale it can be a bit bewildering. It pays to do a bit of research and find out the qualities of each one. There is of course information available at Potato Day, but over the years I have now settled on eight varieties.
Primarily they absolutely have to be slug resistant. For some reason slugs like to munch some types of potato but not others. The other big pest is a fungal one. Blight. That's the same potato blight which caused famine in Ireland all those years ago.
We didn't get it at all last year but that was because it was such a dry year. It thrives in warm, humid conditions, exactly the conditions we are getting more and more in summer as the climate breaks down.
There are some varieties which have been bred to be very resistant to this scourge. I have grown them and their leaves did stay wonderfully green compared to the collapsed foliage of the potatoes all around them. Unfortunately though they have very little taste.
So instead I look for varieties with 'some resistance'. This usually means that they do get killed off by blight, but that for some reason it seems slower to infect the tubers meaning that more can be saved.

It is this prevalence of blight nowadays which necessitates purchasing new seed potatoes every year. If we didn't get it I would probably just use last years potatoes to start off the crop each year. This is the reason why 'volunteer' potatoes, those which you missed harvesting the previous year and appear in last year's bed, need to be removed straight away.

So, my eight varieties:
Earlies - Arran Pilot and Red Duke of York.
Second Earlies - Kestrel and Charlotte (Kestrel is the variety chosen by the Grow Your Own group for everybody to grow this year so we can compare results. Fortunately it is one which I grow every year as it grows very well here. I did used to grow Blue Kestrel successfully too but it is no longer available at potato day)
Maincrops - Desiree, Valor (a new one I tried last year, very firm flesh which stores well and has a lovely taste), Cara (a good all round white potato. I would prefer the organic growers' favourite Orla but that one is not available).
Speciality - Pink Fir Apple - very late to form tubers so be prepared to get none if blight comes early. But in a good year I get sacks full. It is a distinctive potato which is great boiled or whole in winter stews. It lasts well through the winter and we are often still eating it when the first of the early potatoes is ready in spring.

I have planted some of the Arran Pilot potatoes in the polytunnel where I can protect the emerging leaves from frosts. They will give an early harvest of new potatoes.

Arran Pilot and Kestrel potatoes being chitted

The rest are in the conservatory (aka plant nursery come potting shed at this time of year) chitting. This is the process where you lay them out in egg boxes and encourage them to start sprouting. In theory this gives them a head start once they are outside in the ground.
They can' just go straight into the ground outside as any frosts will likely kill them.
I think the effect of chitting is marginal but it's just something you do, almost a custom which marks the beginning of the potato growing year.