As readers of this blog may have noticed in previous posts, I really want to grow blue potatoes. They are just so cool, and since they are also expensive, I figured I'd get a good ROI (return on investment-- sorry, I'm currently taking an online business course....).
When I finally got a shipment of Adirondack blue seed potatoes this spring I was saddened that many of them were rotten. I called Pinetree Garden Seeds, and they promptly sent some fingerling seed potatoes as replacements, since there were no healthy blues left in stock. I planted the few salvaged tubers without much hope, thinking I'd have to wait yet another year for my blue potatoes. To my surprise they sprouted in a couple of weeks.
I weeded and watered the potatoes lovingly all spring and into summer. Last week the foliage died back, and last night I harvested.
First I removed all the withered foliage, and any remaining weeds. The adjacent planting of fingerlings is still growing, and the vigorous vines were lying across the bed of blues, so I carefully moved them aside. Here's the potato patch before digging:
I gently forked under the potatoes all through the bed, working from the outside in. I didn't poke one potato!
Here's the bed afterwards with my harvest:
Not a vast haul, but enough for a few meals and a good stock of seed potatoes for next year.
There were a couple of giants--here's one:
And here's a closeup of the harvest -including a few fingerlings that strayed.
As I headed into the house for the night I took this shot of the flower garden side of the yard in the evening light. The two tall yellows are Rudbeckia nitida, a tough as nails and spectacular native flower.
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