why are all the potatoes out of stock!!!!

[Sailawaygirl]

I grow potatoes every year, normally do my order online in Jan, sometimes later when there are late offers on. This year nearly all the ones I want are out of stock at one place or another, or to get what i want I will have to order from 4 different companies (so miss promos or free postage or have to pay 4 lots of postage).

I just really confused !! are so many ppl growing seed potatoes, has there been a harvest failure again?

What types are you looking for? I generally, only grow pink fir, plus any odd sods I find late in the season for 50p a bag.
My local garden centre has several types. Where you have you looked?

I normally get 1k bags of
Swift
Acoustic
Sarpo blus danube
Hedi red ( red potato)
Blue ? Annise ( all blue)

I normally get online from Marshalls or dt brown. Sometimes Suttons or cheap on seed parade.
But all of above are showing as out of stock variously across the different sites. And loads sis saying sold out, which is odd?
Garden Centre just does small bags but at least no postage I suppose

There's a sign at my local garden centre about varieties that aren't available this year due to harvest failure in Scotland

I wondered if that was the case. Cause it seemed to early for things to sold out on line!

Poundland have them in atm which I think are new stock. They are three to a pack for £1. Or you can see if there's a Potato Day in your local big town/city. We've just had ours in Nottingham over the weekend which was a great success. There would be more than a 100 varieties to choose from. Another way to get seed potatoes is whether there's an allotment site near you where the shop sells them too.

@irridium I've never heard of a potato day! That's sounds great. I used to live in big citys and we did a big order from our allotment but I'm in middle of country side now. I love trying heritage varieties but have big blight and drought issues so need early or sarpo and extra drough resistance. So less able to give things a go as I end up with potato's the size of marbles if it's a bad year !!

Sounds like you might have to pencil in Nottingham's Potato Day for next year

Not that I've just fallen down a Potato shaped wormhole but I've also managed to spot this event on soon!

Suttons have a 1/2 price mix and match sale on currently. I'm not sure if they are the varieties you are after though OP.

You said you normally buy 1kg bags of seed potatoes. I'm sure you already know this, but if you could only buy a smaller amount, you can split what you have, and as long as there is an eye, the section of potato will still sprout.

Just to add, I had to really shop around a few weeks ago to get hold of International Kidneys and harvest failure was the key reason given by 3 different suppliers who had to cancel my order.

I hope to go to a potato day on 9th Feb., I didn't know they were a thing until latelast year. But there were seed potatoes for sale on Saturday, just gone, at RHS Bridgewater.