Pink Fir Apple Seed Potatoes
Price range: £7.40 through £62.00
Well known novelty variety with long and knobbly tubers. Most people who don’t know potato varieties know the Pink Fir Apple. A firm white flesh surrounded by pink tinged skin. Waxy variety is always a delight to pull out of the ground and brightens any salad to get the conversation going.
A late maincrop salad variety first marketed in 1850. Pink Fir Apple produces long, knobbly, pink-skinned tubers with creamy, firm, waxy flesh. Well known for its excellent taste.
| Quantity | Discount | Discounted price |
| 5 - 9 | £1.00 | £6.40 |
| 10 + | £2.00 | £5.40 |
Grow bags are ideal if you are short on space
Each bag will take 3 tubers. Sold in packs of 2
Grow Bags
Price range: £5.60 through £6.85
Hessian Sacks
Price range: £6.95 through £19.95🥔How do I chit, plant, grow and harvest my potatoes? What problems will I have? Join our newsletter to get growing information sent to you at the correct time after purchase.
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We will dispatch Seed Potatoes and accessories on a week to suit you in the Spring at no extra charge.
Prices include UK delivery with very few exceptions.
Orders will be dispatched within 4 days then will take 4-5 days to get to you. But this can be longer especially if we have any industrial action.
If you want a specific week, let us know at checkout box. We recommend that you get your potatoes in plenty of time to chit. If you plan to plant in March, we would suggest delivery in late January/February to give 4-6 weeks chitting, if you plan to plant in April, a late February/March date would suit. OVER 98% success rate last year!
Do not ask for delivery too early 4-6 weeks before planting is best.
After delivery it is YOUR responsibility to store the seed potatoes in the correct manner. We have a FREE DELAYED DELIVERY service for our customers and STRONGLY recommend that you if you do not have the correct conditions to store the seed potatoes it would be better to ask for delivery 4-6 weeks before you intend to plant. Seed Potatoes are a natural product and will deteriorate if not stored correctly.
For the vast majority of orders, we do not charge a surcharge for Scottish Highlands and Islands and other remote areas. However, we reserve the right to contact you if we can't get a viable rate. Unfortunately, for large or extremely remote orders, it is likely that we will need to pass on some haulage charge. Please see FAQ for full details
For Isle of Man and the Channel Islands please see FAQ for details.
If you wish to pick up we offer a 15% discount. By default, this option will only appear for local postcodes. If yours doesn’t appear, use our postcode DD3 0QN in the “Deliver to Address”. You need to select local pick up and also put code Pickup in the coupon box. Also to help us, put “pick up” in the “deliver to address”. Note that your order may still take a day or two to organise and we will contact you when your order is ready. We operate on a working farm with machinery, vehicles and livestock and so please keep children and pets inside your car when picking up. This is only available for orders up to £50 – if you wish to pick up a larger order, please contact us prior to ordering.
If we get a parcel returned to us due to wrong details we will charge you postage to re-send. Please check the details on your confirmation note and inform us immediately of any mistakes. Small typos are easy to do!
All products ordered will be sent together in the same delivery. If you require us to split the delivery YOU MUST do two orders. Bulk discounts are only available for the same order. A mixed order for Seed Potatoes and Potatoes to Eat is welcome as long as they are to be dispatched immediately.
During times of frost or low temperatures deliveries will be held back until more favourable conditions prevail and we will inform customers of any delays over social media and on our website. Some deliveries may be delayed if we have to re- stock our nets.
See our FAQ page for more information on payment, discounts and delivery dates and our Terms and Conditions regarding refunds
For orders:
up to 2kg we use Royal Mail
2-10 kg we use Hermes / Evri
10 kg+ Parcel Force
The vast majority of our parcels arrive at their destination on time and intact, which is of no consolation when there are issues. It is as frustrating for us as it is for our customers when delays happen as we work hard to get our orders out in a timely manner.
Changing courier companies is not as easy as it sounds – we are “rurally challenged” – changing courier companies is not very easy when the courier depots are 15 miles away, necessitating a round trip of an hour and a half (meaning staff time away from other jobs – i.e. packing other orders – and the expense of vehicle, fuel and parking). Hermes/Evri offers a pickup service to us. We have to have a courier company that will deliver to Shetland, Cornwall and everywhere in-between. Changing companies would result in an overall slower and more expensive service to the majority of our customers. Different people in different areas of the country will state that X company is the worst.
If there is a known problem with delivery in your area, please contact us BEFORE you place your order and we will see if we can work something out.
If a parcel goes missing we will get another one out to you immediately – we have to wait for 28 days to make our claim.
Tuber size and appearance.
The size will vary depending on the variety and the overall harvest the previous year.
🥔Seed Potatoes are generally much smaller than the eating equivalent. Unless otherwise stated, Potato House sells seed potatoes as 35mm-55mm which is the industry standard across the UK.
🥔This does not mean that the tuber is 35mmx55mm This means that when the potato is graded, it will fall through a 55mm square, but not through a 35mm square.
🥔The legal limit for UK seed potatoes is 25mm. We abide by the rules set in The Seed Potatoes (Scotland) Regulations 2015
🥔 Seed Potatoes are a natural product. Variations between varieties and different years are to be expected.
🥔Our 3-tuber and 6-tuber nets of potatoes are packed by number, not weight and there can be a variation on the size of the tubers in each net. However the overall legal limit for a 6 tuber pack is 150g. Most of our 6 tuber packs will be double or even treble this, depending on the variety.
🥔Our 1kg nets are 1kg, but can also have variation in size of the tubers within that net. There is an average of 12-14 tubers in a 1kg net. But this can vary depending on variety and the harvest. The number could be as low as 8 or as high as 16. Our netting machine picks the potatoes to get the weight right.
🥔We could supply only the mid sized tubers - but then if the larger and smaller could not be sold we would need to charge double for the medium ones and this would generate huge waste. This is especially true of our rare varieties.
🥔Pictures show the variation in size. The bottom two are from delighted customers who uploaded these to our Facebook reviews. Every tuber here produced a great yield.
🥔Customers' expectations of what size a seed potato should be can be very different. Some customers like large potatoes to cut and others like the smallest possible tubers. We have 90 different varieties in 4 different net sizes and do not do any further grading due to the work involved and the storage space in our store. If we did do further grading, the price would go up for all our customers.
FINGERLING VARIETIES such as Anya, Ratte and Pink Fir Apple
Fingerling types like Ratte can be harder to grade than round types. While most seed potatoes are categorized by the standard range, the natural tuber shape for fingerlings is long and slender. Their irregular, long, and often tapered shapes make automated sizing difficult and manual sorting time-consuming. The minimum length of these varieties sold by us will be 35mm. The diameter will be smaller.
BBC's Gardener's World has a fantastic video of Monty Don chitting his potatoes on their facebook page - his chitting tray shows an array of sizes.
We have a few award-winning bloggers working with us, who take pics of their chitting potatoes and the different sizes. Rob Smith is a writer for many gardening magazines, and his pictures on his facebook page clearly show different sizes of potatoes from the same net.
If you put "does the size of a seed potato matter UK" into google, it brings up the following Yes, the size of a seed potato matters in the UK, as it influences the number and size of the harvested tubers rather than the total yield, with ideal sizes generally ranging between 25 and 50 mm"
Interestingly, we are listed on page one of that search - our FAQ about the size of potatoes is highlighted by Google - see screen shot and link.
🥔 For the last few years we have trialled selling much smaller potatoes and these will be very clearly marked and sold in 450g nets to avoid confusion. We are offering these to you as a trial - by having a market for these potatoes which are smaller than our usual and being able to sell at a reduced price means that we can keep our prices low overall. These will be offered, if available when we have sold out of our standard potatoes. They are still within the size limits allowed to be sold as seed potatoes (25mm min shortest edge) and will give a good crop. There are around 12 in a 450g bag and we would suggest planting two of these as one. The 450g nets are included in the 6 tuber net and 1kg bulk deals. Your feedback is most welcome whether you buy or not, please let us know.
🥔The expectation that a seed potato will be 100% perfect is not what reality is, although this expectation will be met 75% of the time.
The pictures on our web are of tubers that have been freshly harvested and washed. This is to show what they will look like when you harvest and wash your potatoes. When your seed potatoes arrive, they will be dirty, some bright colours may have faded, and they may have some mechanical scuff marks and scab. These are within the permitted levels to be sold. See FAQ for more details.
We abide by the rules set in The Seed Potatoes (Scotland) Regulations 2015 and are governed by the BPTA Conditions of Sale.
- Chitting is simply waking the seed potato up after its winter dormancy ready to grow. We have a great video on How to Chit potatoes
- It is definitely a good idea to chit, but to do this you need to get your seed nice and early – maybe January or February if you are in the South of England and March or April if you are in North of Scotland. The aim is to have your potatoes come through the ground after the last frost in your area as the new plant is susceptible to frost.
- Chitted seed will be ready to grow much quicker once Spring arrives and the soil warms up. Chitted seed should come through the ground in about 2 weeks.
- If you buy your seed in April or May, however, then there is little or no advantage in chitting since the soil temperature will be ok for planting, though the unchitted seed will take c4 weeks to come through the ground.
- Remove the seed potatoes from the net as soon as you receive them (as the shoots will grow through the nets and can break if you try to remove them) and put them in an egg carton in a sunny window sill. The shoots will start to sprout and when they are around an inch long they will be ready to plant.
- Early Main Crop and Main Crop take around 15 – 22 week respectively to mature. Main crops can be planted till around mid May depending on where you are in the UK
- There is a common myth that you can cut the tuber up to give a better yield. We do not advise this. Tubers have enough stored energy to get to the surface and produce a healthy crop. By cutting they you are risking the tuber going mouldy as it has no skin to protect it and lower yields.
- Potatoes like to be watered but not water-logged and so ensure your pot or area has good drainage.
- Potatoes need a sunny site away from frost pockets - the newly emerging foliage is susceptible to frost damage in April and May.
- The traditional planting method is to dig a narrow trench 12cm (5in) deep. The seed tubers are spaced 37cm (15in) for maincrop varieties in rows 75cm (30in) apart. Apply a general purpose fertiliser at this stage. When the emerging shoots come through, you need to "earth" or "mound" them up - this is counter intuitive. Do this several times. This encourages downward growth - the new tubers will jostle for space and any growing near the surface will turn green.
- Small crops of potatoes can also be grown in large, deep containers, and this is a good way of getting an early batch of new potatoes. Fill the bottom 15cm (6in) of the container with potting compost and plant the seed potato just below this. As the new stems start growing, keep adding compost until the container is full.
- With maincrops for storage wait until the foliage turns yellow, then cut it and remove it. Leave for 10 days before harvesting the tubers - this allows the skin to set, leaving them to dry for a few hours before storing.
See our FAQ page for more information on the differences in crop varieties and common problems
🥔How do I chit, plant, grow and harvest my potatoes? What problems will I have? Join our newsletter to get growing information sent to you at the correct time after purchase.
🥔💙 💛 🖤 💚 ❤️Don't know what chitting means? Don't worry - we're here to help!
You don’t need a garden degree to grow potatoes - we have a step-by-step guide that will be emailed to you at regular intervals.
When you order with Potato House, it’s not just fabulous seed potatoes you’ll receive — it’s expert advice too!
📨 A step-by-step growing guide is emailed straight to you after your order is dispatched!
📨 Easy-to-follow tips from planting to harvesting - and even some recipes
📨 Perfect for kids, beginners, or anyone planting their first patch! Seasoned gardeners may even learn something new!
🥔How do I chit, plant, grow and harvest my potatoes? What problems will I have? Join our newsletter to get growing information sent to you at the correct time after purchase.
Sign up for our Newsletters. We will send you periodic information and offers tailored to your needs - please tick the relevant boxes.
You will be able to unsubscribe at any time. You will need to confirm your email after you sign up before you can receive any newsletters. Please make sure that your email provider and inbox is set to allow marketing emails, as some will mark it as junk before it even arrives in your inbox. Add amy@potatohouse DOT co DOT uk to your safe list.
If you don't get a confirmation email, check your junk mail. We will send you a reminder if you don't confirm your email.
Here at Potato House, we net and bag up most of our seed potatoes. If a variety is out of stock this could be temporary or indeed we could well be out of stock for the season. There could be a delay from our store to the web as we communicate this information.
We have different stock message labels on our seed potatoes. These will vary as the season progresses.
If a product has COMING SOON or WISH LIST it means we are still assessing quality/quantity from our harvest, or that we are in the process of buying this variety from our trusted growers. We are 99% sure that this variety will be for sale before Christmas, but it isn't listed until we know that it has passed all relevant inspections. Please go on our wish list for any variety that you like and we will send you an email when it is available.
If a product has DELAY TO REBAG on it, it means that we need to check stock and re-bag if we still have some left. This is not a guarantee that we do have more in stock. We have to check. In some circumstances a variety can go back on for sale - it will depend on the final bagging up for customers over the next few weeks. If you go on the stock alert you will be notified either later in this season, or for next season.
If a product has SOLD OUT, it really does mean sold out for that season. Please go on the stock alert for the following year and we will let you know when we have it for sale again.
If a product has UNAVAILABLE it means that we have had this variety in recent years but are not able to supply it for this season. We simply do not have the room to grow every variety each year and so if you are looking for a variety that you bought from us before and we now don’t stock it, we may grow it again in the future. We also have been affected by Brexit as we are now prohibited to sell seed Potatoes to EU AND NI. We sold 40% of our harvest to EU and some varieties are sadly now not viable without this market. Occasionally there is a crop failure.
If a PACK SIZE has sold out (eg there are 6 tuber nets available, but no 1 kg nets) this will be getting rebagged, if we have more of that variety left.
Potato House grows around 90 varieties and some are in small quantities and sell out quickly. We leave these products on our web and if you are looking for a particular variety, we invite you to sign up for the stock alert found on each variety or to join our mailing list. When we harvest in the autumn and know quantities we then will open our web up for pre-orders and let our mailing list know about this.
Some varieties are grown to order for customers and we will have most of the crop sold but will perhaps have some available once we do the final bagging for our customers. Therefore new varieties may appear mid-season. We usually let people know about this via our newsletter.
Sign up for our Newsletters. We will send you periodic information and offers tailored to your needs - please tick the relevant boxes.
You will be able to unsubscribe at any time. You will need to confirm your email after you sign up before you can receive any newsletters. Please make sure that your email provider and inbox is set to allow marketing emails, as some will mark it as junk before it even arrives in your inbox. Add amy@potatohouse DOT co DOT uk to your safe list.
If you don't get a confirmation email, check your junk mail. We will send you a reminder if you don't confirm your email.
RHS Recommended: Award of Garden Merit
This plant/cultivar has been awarded the RHS Recommended: Award of Garden Merit because it has proved to be reliable in appropriate conditions and a good-performing plant. For more information on RHS Recommended: Award of Garden Merit plants, please visit the RHS Plant Trials and Awards page.
To see the potatoes in the list, click on LISTS half way down this page, Click Fruit, herbs and vegetables then scroll to potatoes
What is the RHS Recommended: Award of Garden Merit?
The RHS Recommended: Award of Garden Merit is intended to help gardeners choose plants that are reliable and perform well in gardens. It is only awarded to plants that are:
- Easy to grow and reliable in normal garden conditions
- Readily available to buy in garden centres or online
- Healthy, robust plants with strong growth and appearance
- True to type, maintaining consistent shape, colour and form
- Reasonably resistant to common pests and diseases
To ensure consistent standards are maintained, the RHS Recommended: AGM is subject to regular review to make sure that every plant still merits its place on the list. Since 2013, reviews have been conducted by each RHS Expert Group on a rolling basis.
We are delighted that so many of the varieties that we grow and supply have gained this prestigious award. If you think other varieties should have this award, or have any comments about this award, please contact RHS directly.
Some exciting news for 2026 - we have lots more of our varieties in trials with RHS.
90% of seed potatoes sold by Potato House are our own production. Each year, a few varieties are sourced from other local growers to complete our range. The potatoes are all certified seed and are of the same high quality that the home-grown ones are. This variety has been bought in for this season.
We abide by the rules set in The Seed Potatoes (Scotland) Regulations 2015, as do all our trusted suppliers.
6 reviews for Pink Fir Apple Seed Potatoes
Susceptible to potato cyst nematode Globodera rostochiensis Ro1 and Globodera pallida Pa2/3,1.
Parentage Bred from Darbre
Disease results from independent trials by Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB)
john.lynch23 (verified owner) –
We’d heard about these – who hasn’t? but this was the first year I’d grown them. I’ve doubled my order for 2024. We love the taste, visitors like them, and all the preparation they need is a good hard blast with a hose on lifting to get the soil off. Leave the skins on!
Kathryn –
Due to relocation I planted these very late (end of May) and they had to go straight into a bed that hadn’t been amended in any way. I wasn’t holding out much hope especially since we have prolific voles in the vegetable garden. We dug up the tubers last week (mid Sept) as there was some mouse damage on some of them and what can I say, 6 seed tubers yielded an astonishing amount of perfectly shaped, mid to large sized rather delicious salad potatoes!
Carrie Galloway (verified owner) –
I love these potatoes and grew them in 10 litre buckets. The first year I grew them in buckets, using plenty of organic fertilizer and an acid leaf mould soil and I had a good crop and saved some of the tubers for next year’s planting in buckets. The second year I grew again in buckets and I had a lovely crop but made the mistake of leaving them in the buckets until I harvested them over winter when the temperature where I recently moved to further north was -11. Hence I now have to buy again because I like them! The shape of these potatoes seem to suit buckets and I like the taste. I scrub but never peel them.
Daniel Baines –
This potato gets rave reviews from everyone. People just love it. Whenever you mention heritage potatoes to poeple who don’t really know about the subject, they will say ‘oh like Pink Fir Apple?’ However, I have a contrary view. I don’t like them. The taste is OK. A little nutty, but not that much. Thats where the benefits end. They’re so oddly and unevenly shaped that they’re super annoying to peel, and they cook unevenly. While the shape attracts people’s attention to the variety, its a major negative in practice. They’re waxy too, and don’t crisp very well. They don’t store. Mine always rot away to a fish smelling black paste after a couple of weeks in storage, whereas my other varieties don’t do this. I give them 2 stars, 1 for not tasting bad, and 1 for the interesting look.
Amy Skea (verified owner) –
Hi Daniel
Thanks for your review. I’d like to address the negative points that you raise.
I do not peel potatoes as a rule, and certainly wouldn’t dream of attempting to peel these, far too fiddly! Perhaps if you leave the skin on it would be better. One of the attractions, and selling points of this variety, is that they are unusually shaped. We list these as a waxy variety – we don’t have degrees of waxiness in our listing. We also don’t think they are good for crisps, many other varieties are better for this method of cooking, Pink Fir Apple is better for boiling and serving as a salad potato as they hold their shape well. These are a main crop variety and usually do store very well (my parents grew these last year in Inverness and were still eating them in great condition in January). I will be elaborating on the issue of storage on our FAQ soon.
The taste is of course subjective and these are obviously not to your liking. We are looking forward to seeing what you grow next year – will you be tempted to try these again after what I have mentioned, or will you go for something completely different?
C mason (verified owner) –
Great crop of pink fir Apple potatoes I put too many in each pot so didn’t get as many as I could have as they had no room to grow, lesson learnt when you have such good seed potatoes don’t put as many in a pot, really lovely tasting and prolific growers, won’t go anywhere else for my potatoes.
Emma Reeve –
P•I•N•K•F•I•R – Thrilled with today’s harvest is a complete understatement as I stood watching Simon digging for potato gold. The pink firs have done us proud this year with nearly 3kg of joy dug up today ready to be feasted on in the next couple of weeks. Potato House really do supply the most amazing potatoes, with lots of variety too. I am already thinking about next years list of spuds to purchase. As always the Pink Fir Apple will remain at the top of the list. There’s something about the quirky, bobbly shape that I just LOVE. Give me a ugly potato any day! Im currently roasting a handful, and tomorrow I’ll be eating them with a knob of butter. Who can resist them hey?