Potato Patch

[karstopography]

Today, when I was digging holes to plant my tomato transplants, I dug up several red pontiac potatoes from my November crop. The potatoes hadn’t sprouted yet and looked pretty good, but I put them in the compost bin.

Got to do a better job harvesting my potatoes.

[rxkeith]

i always miss some.
they over winter pretty well here with 3 ft of white mulch for much of the winter.
they provide a supplemental harvest, some times a pretty good one too.


keith

[Whwoz]

Yes, missing the odd spud is standard when digging them, regardless of skin and soil colour

[karstopography]

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Covered my potatoes. Going to freeze tonight, 28°, I figured a layer of soil might protect the tender plants. I’ll find out.

[karstopography]

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Covering the potatoes with a layer of soil evidently prevented their freezing. We were sub-freezing for something like 12 hours and got as low as 28° if not lower. Other than some minor mechanical damage from being covered with soil, the potatoes look fine.

When I add soil during the season, there’s always a measure of mechanical damage from that process.

[karstopography]

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I don’t think anything beats a potato plant for rate of growth. The February 20th freeze did nothing to slow these down. Pleased with the patch this year. I planted more potatoes than ever before. Hope it works out.

[GoDawgs]

Looking good, Karsto! And that reminds me to set hoops in place ready for row cover over the 12' row here. Too much frost damage over past years so now I try to set the anchors and hoops as soon as they're planted. Nothing up yet as they were just planted three days ago. Note made to get this done. Thanks!

[karstopography]

Yes, my potato plants weren’t up so high that they couldn’t be easily buried with loose soil then unburied after the freeze. The Kennebec potatoes were only just breaking through the soil at the time of the freeze on the 20th. Luckily, I had a pile of loose soil mere feet away that I had planned on using to hill the potatoes. One active shovel and elbow grease is all it takes. Potatoes evidently are amazingly resilient to having a bunch of loose soil piled on top of them.

The potatoes have all been hilled at this point except a few of the kennebec laggards. I don’t go bonkers with hilling repeatedly, maybe one good initial hilling when the plants are up 6-9” or so and a subsequent tweak or two, but I do think some hilling helps keep any of the higher up potatoes from getting light on them.

[GoDawgs]

Yes, my potato plants weren’t up so high that they couldn’t be easily buried with loose soil then unburied after the freeze. The Kennebec potatoes were only just breaking through the soil at the time of the freeze on the 20th. Luckily, I had a pile of loose soil mere feet away that I had planned on using to hill the potatoes. One active shovel and elbow grease is all it takes. Potatoes evidently are amazingly resilient to having a bunch of loose soil piled on top of them...

We do that too. However we've had freak heavy frosts come through in the first half of April when the plants are too big to cover with soil. Better to be ready than not.

[karstopography]

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Probably the best my potatoes have ever looked at this point of the season. Minuscule amounts of pest sign. Everything is nice and green. The Purple Majesty in the white bed have flower buds appearing.

The Dark Red Norland look strong, I don’t know if they tend to bloom or not being this is my first experience with that type. The kennebec are the laggards, but they always are.

[karstopography]

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Dug up these purple majesty potatoes from two plants today. Just shy of two pounds. Still “new” with tender skins. Yesterday, I got 10 decent sized potatoes off one red Norland plant, maybe 1.5 pounds.

[bower]

I've been watching youtube videos about growing spuds in raised beds, without hilling or minimally. So different from what I tried to do before, with the 'old ways' stuck in my head. So I will be doing things differently this time.
I ordered seed potatoes from a local company which haven't arrived yet: Yukon Gold, Cristina, and a smaller bag of French Fingerling. Cristina is an improved Pontiac Red, so they say. It was a tossup between that and Norland, which I know is a good bet, but I decided to try the Cristina anyway. Over $10 a bag for 2 kilos of seed, so decided not to get both.
Then of course I ended up confronted with rows of seed potatoes and such when I went to the hardware store to buy some pots. Oh dear. So now I have 3 more 1 kilo bags of seed potatoes: Red Thumb, Red Apple, and Gourmandine. All early-midseason types which is good for a garlic rotation.
And I want to grow a few early spuds in a pot in the greenhouse. Now all I need is a bigger pot and more dirt!!
I'm hoping the compost supply will be available early, on account of the low snow winter.

[karstopography]

@bower I was a bit underwhelmed by the flavor and texture of Dark Red Norland as compared to Red Pontiac, but I have only had the Red Norland the one time. Looks like I’ll have plenty of the Red Norland so I hope they improve over that first impression. They weren’t bad, but not nearly as good as I remember the Red Pontiac being, just sort of bland or something, lacked that great fresh potato flavor I get from Pontiac and seemed much more waxy the Red Pontiac. The Red Norland didn’t go into the fridge so I can’t blame that. I sliced Red Norland into thick coins, seasoned them and patted with good butter and baked them in the oven. Maybe I need to cook them differently than Pontiac.

Tonight, we will be mashing some Purple Majesty potatoes. I hope they are good. I hear they are earthy. Earthy can be good.

[bower]

Those Purple Majesty look interesting! Looking forward to your review.
I agree that Norland is nothing special, except for being a serviceable fresh potato from the garden, easy to grow. The best ones I've eaten were in the spring - they get sweeter in storage.
Pontiac Red was an old favorite of mine, I used to grow it every year back when Dad and I grew potatoes together.
He also grew Kennebec and favored them for the high yield, but to my mind they were nothing special.
He grew a lot of Yukon Gold as well, which was their favorite.
Then one year we had blight on the tubers. A slimy rot. I got it on my hands and wow, they turned bright red and stinging, so I decided I must be allergic to the blight. It was such a bad experience, I stopped growing potatoes for many years after.
Cristina has multiple disease resistances, so if it's as good as Pontiac Red I'll be well pleased.

I think my personal ideal potato would be earthy/tasty waxy and sweet. I am not much for floury and rarely boil or mash. Early is a plus and scab resistance pretty much a necessity for us. Bellanita which is an early and small fingerling type did well here, that is a Linzer Delicatess type, and I liked them a lot but didn't find the seed available (not yet anyway). In the later season, German Butterball was outstanding being both tasty and disease resistant enough. Those seed sell out early, it seems.
If you ever get your hands on some Irish Cobbler, one of the tastiest potatoes I've ever had. Not disease resistant unfortunately, but they are quite early and a real treat. I nearly ordered some from another place because I'm craving a good spud pretty badly... as you can tell.

[karstopography]

@bower the Purple Majesty potatoes mashed got great reviews. I peeled them, some had minor amounts of scab, and then boiled in salted water until tender. I mashed them with an old fashioned potato masher then added in a decent amount of butter and a little whole milk and worked them a bit more with a fork.

The flavor was very good, excellent. Very “potatoey”. More so than typical potatoes for mashing. The texture was super nice, not mealy, grainy or gummy, smooth, substantial, about ideal.

The color takes getting used to. The water from boiling the potatoes looked distressingly like toilet bowl cleaner. The potatoes mashed looked like some sort of blueberry ice cream. I got over the color, but it was a bit shocking.

[Whwoz]

The old Purple Congo potatoes have the same affect but worth growing. I just wish that there is a purple fleshed, white skinned one out there to make them easier to find when digging

[karstopography]

The old Purple Congo potatoes have the same affect but worth growing. I just wish that there is a purple fleshed, white skinned one out there to make them easier to find when digging

For sure. Hard to spot in dark soil these purple potatoes. Mine seemed close to the stem of the potato plants and not particularly high up the plant. One of two were near the surface of the soil, but most were well down deep.