Potatoes

Potatoes are a really special crop for the farm and have been the core of our cropping for many years.

To produce top quality packing potatoes the Farm has invested heavily in modern planting, harvesting and grading machinery as well as making use of up to date technology on such things as irrigation monitoring and RTK precision steering on tractors to give more accuracy with applications. We also employ an independent potato specialist to supply advice and agronomy.

Potatoes are all harvested direct into boxes and sent direct to the customer or graded into different size bands, chilled and dispatched next day.

Varieties include Maris Peer, Annabelle, Gwenne, Iodea and Charlotte  which are all grown as salads or scrapers,  Marfona  which is grown for early bakers and Maris Piper, Lanorma, Harry and King Edwards which are for early pre-packing. We also grow specialty varieties such as Laura, Empress and Baby Lou.

The kind climate and sandy soils in East Suffolk enable us to grow early crops of potatoes which are generally sold straight off the field in summer. Very few crops are stored because we struggle to achieve good skin finish. Up to 200 acres of crops are fleeced every year to promote earliness and protect the plants from late frosts.

The farm is also host of AHDB Strategic Potato Farm Programme for the East of the UK so we facilitate many potato trials each season and host multiple grower open days.