Boy were we sold a bill of goods.
Heidi picked up these seed potatoes labeled "Red" and put them in the ground in all good faith earlier in the spring.
Now that it's summer and the potatoes are ready to harvest*, we pull them from the ground and lo and behold, they aren't red, but magenta!
Despite the unabashed false-advertising of the seed-potato seller, being hungry for breakfast, we decided to see if the flavor and texture of the potatoes would be at all decent.
We found the potatoes also completely different from those of our recent memory; rather than thick-skinned, dry, bland and starchy, these were thin-skinned, moist, sweet and silky. Preposterous!
These were potatoes not in need of sticks of butter to make them delicious. I had thoughts of adding these to my butter to improve the butter's flavor.
Having recovered from the shock to our systems these unexpected events caused, and having nothing else at hand for breakfast, we promptly devoured the lot with garlic and thyme, a la Alice Waters.
* In all seriousness, why did it take 35 years for me to learn that potatoes can be harvested before fall?! This stuff should be taught in gradeschool! Use flashcards if necessary, but teach the children for heaven's sake!
5 comments :
This is excellent news! I too have a potato patch, planted with red potatoes. I planted mine late, so I think I should let them grow for a few more weeks, but I'll bet you're right about harvesting them early. I'll start digging them up at the end of July or early August.
Heidi's book says you should be able to harvest them by the time the flowers come out on the plant.
Yummy! I'm laughing about the butter! Yes, agricultural flashcards, should be a money maker in this economy!
Potatoes should be harvested "when they are ready" -- Heidi's book may hold the clue, although I hadn't noticed it before: "harvest them by the time the flowers come out".
Note that some are magenta and some are "Blond". Your Great Uncle Jim raised some purple-fleshed potatoes that only Ida could distinguish as tasting better than the white-fleshed ones. [Note: It was a "blind" test; She thought that she had chosen the whites as being better than the purples!]
I too thought they were a fall harvest crop. I think that I will start digging some of mine up too. We didn't plant any, but we have a lot that were carry overs from the ones we didn't dig up last year.
Tom
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