I am REALLY starting to love my homegrown potatoes, and can’t even imagine a year without them anymore—kinda like tomatoes!

This year I planted my first crop the beginning of April. As many of you know, planting a crop of potatoes for me means to clean all the half digested compost out of my potato garden (built with a couple pieces of 2 x 12), lay all the growing potatoes I have in my cabinet in the bottom, and then refill it with the half done compost. On August 6, after the foliage had almost completely died down I dug up my first crop and got a little over 4 pounds—ranging from a quarter inch to a few inches in diameter (that’s a 10" plate they’re on).

From Veggies - 2009

A few days later I planted my second crop! I usually mostly buy red potatoes—think they have more flavor—and don’t often bake potatoes anyway—but this time I had both some red and some white potatoes. What happened next was REALLY interesting! The white potatoes were planted on the left, and they started growing foliage immediately—like the reds have always done in past plantings. But this time the reds never grew any foliage at all! Still wonder what was up with that!

From Veggies - 2009

The end of September they were lookin’ good—at least the white ones were! The reds were still zilch!

From Veggies - 2009

I don’t remember exactly when it was, but when I was on a trip one time in early October the temp went down to 19 one nite! So much for veggie gardening! The second crop had only been in the ground for about 6 weeks by then, and I really wasn’t expecting much! I’ve found potatoes I had thrown out growing in the compost pile even in winter, so I debated if it would accomplish anything to leave them in the ground a while longer, but by October 20 I was so curious to see if I had gotten anything that I couldn’t wait anymore and I dug them up! (They’re on a 8½" plate this time!)

From Veggies - 2009

I got a little over 2 pounds this time—in just 6 weeks! And as you can see, I even got a few red ones—which never got ANY foliage at all! The miracle of the potatoes!

When I dug up the second crop there were "roots" that seemed to have tinytinytiny starting potatoes on them, so I reburied them and now I’m gonna wait till spring to see if I have a second miracle! Never expected the first one, so why not a second one!

In spring, potatoes are going to be the first thing to go in next year! I’m thinking in March some time. They definitely seem to be able to take the cold—as long as they haven’t developed foliage yet, and I’m gonna take a chance that even if they have foliage and it freezes, they’ll recover pretty well. What I really want to do is to get THREE crops in next year!

Every single one of the ones I’ve grown so far I’ve eaten by just scrubbing them off, boiling them till tender, and putting a little butter and salt on them. They are SO good I don’t want to do anything else that will alter the flavor!

Anybody else have a potato story—or a second harvest story?

Potato girl,
Skybird

I haven't been able to grow potatoes here for years now, too much disease build up. I might try next summer.

My favorite is Pontiac, a red one, with a wonderful flavor.

Dan

The seed for that planting were potatoes that you had indoors until then, right?

They look tasty on those plates!

Steve

Yes and yes, Digit! I planted the "second batch" somewhere around August 13th or 14th, and then harvested them on October 20th, so they were in the ground about 9 weeks—I calculated wrong the first time. And, yeah, they were all the growing potatoes I had in my cabinet at the time! If you look at the red potatoes in the first pic, you can see that they’re different colors, so I must have had a couple different varieties in the cabinet that time! I sure couldn’t tell any difference in the taste! When they’re that small, they’re just so sweet (you got it, Dan!) I think they might all taste the same. Come spring I’m gonna have to be sure I plan ahead enough to have some growing potatoes in the cabinet!

Oh! And they look even tastier in my mouth than they do on the plate! Now that they’re all gone, I need to quit looking at those pictures! It just makes me want more!

With all the land you have, David, can’t you just rotate them to somewhere where you haven’t grown potatoes before? We never grew potatoes when I was a kid, and I never had any idea that "fresh" potatoes could be that much better than store bought—old and stale—ones!

Hurry spring,
Skybird