With our fast delivery, you could be planting your potatoes within a week from order.
Ratte
DELAY to rebag
SALE
SALE
SALE
3
£5.45 – £45.00
See tab below for details
Classic French variety which produces long shaped tubers with white skin and yellow flesh. It’s also known as Asparges. It has a quite distinctive chestnut flavour and it’s the most delicious when boiled or steamed, hot or cold.
Discounts for bulk buying any variety of 25 kg hessian sacks. See wholesale page for full details. Applied automatically.
We aim to dispatch within 3 days and then delivery will take 3-4 days. Prices include UK delivery with very few exceptions.
For the vast majority of orders we do not charge a surcharge for Scottish Highlands and Islands. However, we reserve the right to contact you if we can’t get a viable rate. Please see FAQ for full details
We are reluctantly forced to close our online shop to customers in the EU and Northern Ireland. 17/12/20 saw the last order come in from France. Full statement here
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”. 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 you want a specific week, let us know in the information box and we will do our best to send it out then. 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.
All products ordered will be sent together in the same delivery. If you require us to split the delivery please do two orders. Or let us know and an additional postal charge will be payable.
Most varieties are available between November and mid-May. However we grow a lot of varieties in small quantities and these will sell out quite fast.
To ensure your order arrives in the best possible condition, deliveries will be made as soon as all the varieties on your order are available, using an appropriate courier or postal service.
If you choose to pay by BACS or cheque we will not begin to process your order out until your payment has been received and cleared. This could take a few days and may not be checked each day.
During times of frost or low temperatures deliveries will be held back until more favourable conditions prevail.
Some deliveries may be delayed if we have to re- stock our nets, we will try to keep you informed of any delays.
Our 6-tuber nets of potatoes are packed by number, not weight and so there can be a variation on the size of the tubers in each net. 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 – we could supply only the mid sized tubers – but then what would we do with the larger and smaller ones – if they could not be sold we would need to charge double for the medium ones and this would generate huge waste.
Seed Potatoes are generally much smaller than the supermarket eating equivalent. Unless otherwise stated, we sell our 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.
🥔 This year we are trialling selling much smaller potatoes and these will be very clearly marked. We are offering these to you as a trial – by having a market for these small potatoes 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 and will give a great 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.
We abide by the rules set in The Seed Potatoes (Scotland) Regulations 2015
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 crops can be planted till the end of June depending on where you are in the UK. Earlies take 10-12 weeks to mature Second Earlies take slightly longer at around 14-16 weeks to mature.
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 30cm (12in) apart for earlies in rows 24in (60cm) 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 earlies, wait until the flowers open or the buds drop; the tubers are ready to harvest when they are the size of hens’ eggs. These do not store well and should be eaten quickly after harvest.
Taste great simply prepared in their skins. ‘Salad’ potatoes are firm to the bite and are great for a quick, easy and healthier dish. Taste delicious boiled, steamed or roasted whole in their skins. Although the recipe states Charlotte, any waxy potato can be used
Click on pictures to enlarge.
Simple and effective, these Hasselback potatoes are perfect for a lazy lunch or a party nibble.
Recipes are taken from the “AHDB – Potatoes more than a bit on the side” site and used with permission. Click on logo for some more wonderful recipes! AHDB is a members based programme of which Potato House is a member.
We’d love to see any pics of your kitchen creations on our social media pages – see links at the foot of the page.
RHS Award of Garden Merit.
This potato variety has been awarded the RHS Award of Garden Merit because it has proved to be reliable in appropriate conditions and a good performing plant. For more information on RHS Award of Garden Merit plants visit .rhs.org.uk/plants
What is the AGM?
With more than 75,000 plants available in RHS Plant Finder alone, how can you tell which plants are best for all-round garden value? The AGM is intended to help gardeners make that choice, and is only awarded to plants that are:
excellent for ordinary use in appropriate conditions*
available
of good constitution
essentially stable in form and colour
reasonably resistant to pests and diseases
We are delighted that so many of the varieties that we grow and supply have gained this prestigious award.
Here at Potato House, we net and bag up most of our potatoes. If a variety says 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.
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.
If a product has SOLD OUT for 2021, it really does mean sold out.
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 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 the varieties.
Description
Ratte, also known as La Ratte de Paris, La Reine Ratte du Touquet, or Asparges. The La Ratte potato dates back to the mid 19th Century with accounts of a potato with excellent flavour. But by 1934 the potato had all but become extinct due to degeneration of the seed. In 1965, a French Agronomist found the La Ratte growing in a garden and began to nurture the potato back into production. But it was not until 1988 that the potato was introduced to Paris with rave reviews and has since become a staple in French cuisine.
Your order will normally be dispatched within 3-4 days but can be delayed due to frost.
See FAQ for full delivery details. We are reluctantly forced to close our online shop to customers in the EU and Northern Ireland.
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Join email alert listWe will inform you when this sack size of this variety of seed potato is back in stock. If the net size isn't important please also add your email to the other sizes (ie go on both the 6 tuber alert and the 1 kg alert)If we have sold out of this variety for the season, you will get an email in the autumn. If this is getting re-bagged you will get an email in a few weeks.Please leave your valid email address below.We do not give your email to anyone. You will not be signed up for our newsletter or to have an account by this email alert.
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