Potatoes - The Reveal and Some Surprises

Homegrown potatoes were new to the garden last year and yum…what an eye-opener!

I grew 6 different varieties of potatoes – Yukon Gold, Caribe, Roko, Linzer Delikatess, Viking and Bintze.  Other than the Yukon Gold, I had never tasted any of the others.  Different types of potato are amenable to different cooking methods and I kept a cheat sheet in the kitchen so that I could keep all of that straight.  If I needed a baking potato, I reached for a Caribe or Viking, but if I wanted a potato that would stand up amazingly well in the slow cooker (even in 8-9 hour stews!), I would grab some Rokos.

Viking (left) & Yukon Gold (right)
 

I was not only new to growing but also storing potatoes.  Everyone's storage area is different when it comes to the two key variables that impact on how long root vegetables like potatoes will store:  temperature and humidity.  This being the case, I decided to give two different methods a try to see how they did in my particular situation.  First the proper method - layering the potatoes, not touching, in boxes filled with shredded paper.  Then the lazy method – plonking them into open cardboard boxes…done.

I also set aside a bunch of seed potatoes from each variety.  These I boxed up in shredded paper to give them the best chance of getting through until planting time in the spring.

November 2015 - Seed potatoes before they were topped with
more shredded paper & placed in the cold cellar

You can see that there is a greenish cast on the seed potatoes.  Before I boxed them up, I placed all of the seed potato under lights to green up a bit.  I had read that this would induce dormancy but for the life of me cannot find the link where I read this now.

With only a few weeks left until my outdoor planting date, I finally took a look at my seed potatoes back in mid-March:

The reveal on March 17

Before I even pulled back the paper, I knew I was not going to be pleased.  It's a bit hard to see in the photo, but there were several pale sprouts sticking out of the shredded paper - not a good sign.  This is what I found:

March 17 - Viking (left) and Bintz (right)

March 17 - Roko (left) and Linzer (right)

Yukon Gold (bottom and Caribe (top)

This was sort of a surprise and sort of not.  Cold cellar temperatures are directly impacted by how warm or cold it is outside.  We had very warm temperatures this past winter (relatively speaking) and I had seen other bloggers indicate that their potato harvest didn’t last anywhere near as long as a result.

So not great, but not horrible either.  Last year, I purchased seed potato rather late in the season from a local store & planted out spuds that looked very similar:

Viking seed potatoes:
A bit shriveled & severely sprouting but
still gave me a great harvest last year
 

I decided to remove the sprouts that were longer than an inch or so (which is what I did last year) & place all of the seed potatoes under the lights in the basement where they continued chitting in a relatively cool environment until I could get them outside.  This is what they look like now:

April 6 - Viking (left) and Bintje (right)
 

The plan was to get these into the ground by the 2nd week of April but the weather is not cooperating - we had another snow storm yesterday & temps are still too cool.  But the long range forecast indicates that I may be able to plant them by the 16th or 17th if I get some plastic down on the bed soon.

Now on to the eating potatoes.  Over the winter, I have been grabbing the open box potatoes for the kitchen while the box of properly packed, Yukon Gold potatoes has remained untouched.  It was time for the next reveal:

Yukon Gold - April 6

Not bad, but most had small, or bigger, sprouts (take a look at the one in the top right corner).

Now for surprise #1.  This is what the potatoes that I simply bunged into a box look like:

Roko - April 6

A bit of sprouting, but all of the sprouts are nice and stubby with not a single big one.  Unfortunately I didn't store any of the Yukon Golds in this way, which would have been a better comparison.  However, I did note that the Yukon Gold & Roko seed potatoes, which were stored in the same manner, had similar sprouting so I think my comparison is still valid.

And surprise #2.  These are potatoes from the farm I volunteer at that also received the “bung into a box and leave in the cold cellar” treatment:

Farm Potatoes - April 6

Itty bitty, barely there sprouts.  Amazing.  The only problem is that I’m not sure what varieties these are, although I’m fairly certain that I didn’t grow any of them (I recall several of them having unusual names I had never heard of).

So perhaps it’s a matter of variety.  There was, however, one other difference in how the farm potatoes were treated which may also have made the difference.  All of the potatoes from the farm were washed while the potatoes I stored from my garden were not – any excess soil was simply rubbed off.  My thought was that the less the potatoes were disturbed after harvesting, the better - doesn't look like this is the case.  This year, I’ll likely wash my harvest before placing it in storage.  At the very least, washing doesn't seem to hurt them at all and it certainly makes for less messy prep in the kitchen.

The Bottom Line:  All of the potatoes did ok, especially considering the warm winter we had - only one of the Linzers that I was saving for seed shriveled up and had to be tossed.  Had temperatures been normal, I'm confident that sprouting would have been minimal or non-existent all the way around.

So it looks like I will be able to (1) add potatoes to the list of homegrown veg that we will enjoy almost year round and (2) store my own seed potato.  Very exciting indeed!  Now if only the weather would warm up already so that I can get my poor seed potatoes into the ground...