Nice one John, very well put as always. It saddens me just how much of the typical Garden Centre stock comes from China. Even products posing as traditionally British are often lame imitations of the real thing. Take stainless steel spades and forks as an example, as far as I can find out none are made in the UK these days - they all seem to come from the Far East and are very poor quality - my wife breaks them for a hobby. It's such a waste of resources to make an inferior product, ship it around the world and then for it to only last a few weeks.

John - I was at the SRT open day too - very convincing trials grounds and I must say the chips were very good. I've been growing Sarpo Mira since it became available gardeners and it's blight resistance is remarkable. The resistance to virus is important too - I haven't bought new seed since the first ones and this year there's not a virused plant in the whole plot. I thought S. Kifli was tops for flavour, shame it doesn't have foliage resistance. Good news item you've written here on LJ - lets hope it arouses some interest - the folks at SRT deserve success for all their dedicated work.