So what makes the perfect potato with the potential for bags of flavour?<\/p>\n
“We are looking for a really nice, round potato – not too big, not too small, around 50ml,” says Polly.<\/p>\n
“Hopefully that will make the perfect crisp.”<\/p>\n
The planting process requires both patience and regular quality checks, but there is also one other key ingredient: rain.<\/p>\n
In recent years, prolonged spells of hot and dry weather mean that has been harder to come by.<\/p>\n
According to the Met Office, last year’s summer was officially the warmest on record for the UK, with a drought declared in Yorkshire.<\/p>\n
Spring 2026 was also the warmest on record for England and Wales.<\/p>\n
“Our biggest challenge at the minute is water availability,” says Joe Weston, farms director at R S Cockerill.<\/p>\n
“We are having longer, hotter, dry summers and our availability of water is key to our ability to grow potatoes.”<\/p>\n
Polly says having to irrigate is an added expense in the production process, adding: “It’s less so the quality [impacted] but more so the size and amount.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"So what makes the perfect potato with the potential for bags of flavour? “We are looking for a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":718827,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-718826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/718826","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=718826"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/718826\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/718827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=718826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=718826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=718826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}