Attention Gardeners of the US! We can finally grow the famous Sarpo Mira potato
This highly disease resistant and drought tolerant potato is popular in the UK and is now available in the US via mail order. I grew it last year and will again this year!
If you watch a lot of gardening YouTube videos you've probably run into mention of Sarpo Mira (pronounced SHarpo MEER-uh) by UK growers. It's very popular for its high productivity and resistance to blight and other diseases.
I was very curious about this pink-skinned potato originally from Hungary and waited patiently while the one farm in the US received permission to sell it for the first time last year (technically presales in late 2022 and delivery of seed potatoes in 2023). As of a year ago the only place in the US you could get this potato was Wood Prairie Family Farm. I'm not sure if anyone else has been approved but I've shopped with Wood Prairie for a number of years and they also supply some of our local nurseries so I feel good about their products.
This potato is grown mostly for its robustness but is also known as a good all-around potato. Some potatoes are only good for certain cooking applications but this is a solid general purpose potato. It's also interesting because it's more of a dry tater like a russet. At my house we are quite fond of the Yukon Gold, which is more of a moist tuber, as a general purpose potato but it's true that it's not quite as good for frying and baking where the dry potatoes seem to work better with their naturally fluffy texture. Sarpo Mira are a bit more expensive to get started but they grow very well with little attention. I even grew mine in a slightly shaded area and they did great. I'm not sure why I can't find any photos now but the plants were the most vigorous potatoes I've ever grown. Definitely worth giving them a try if you suffer from blight or other diseases.
Check out the Sarpo Mira at Wood Prairie Farms. They have lots of other interesting varieties, some of which sell out from presales in the fall. If you’re interested in purple-flesh potatoes for high antioxidant properties, they have those too, though flavor-wise I didn’t enjoy them as much.
A few notes: I had stopped growing potatoes for awhile because I didn't want to use the space for something that is fairly cheap to buy. However as I've learned about the dramatic loss of nutrients in conventional produce in recent decades (maybe we can get into this another time) I'm more inclined to grow even some of the cheap veg. Secondly, I highly recommend checking out the recent episode of What's Eating Dan on How to Make the Perfect Baked Potato. I ended up following his recipe with a lot of success.