Wednesday, August 8, 2012

Adirondack Blue potato harvest

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.