Saturday, September 5, 2009

Pilfering Potatoes

Our potatoes haven't had time enough yet to form the thick skins they need for good storage, but we have stolen a few and, oh my, are they good. (Something about "new" potatoes that is sooo flavorful!) So this noon I asked Roy to again go dig up a few of the reds for me so I could make some Potato Salad for the weekend and also have some for our meat loaf dinner tonight.

If you remember, I blogged about the sad story of our red potato vines being hit by some sort of a blight. We cut off and burned all the affected greenery a few weeks back and didn't know if this would stop the growth of the spuds under the soil . . . or not.

Lookee this! We dug three or four really big ones today and they look healthy, inside and out.

One of the main reasons I decided to cut off the vines hit with the blight was so it didn't spread to our two rows of white potatoes which seemed, at the time, to be spared from the misfortune the reds were suffering.

As you can see by the above picture, the white potato vines are still going strong and looking healthy.

After seeing the reds we dug up today, I'm beginning to be hopeful that we'll come out better than I had expected on our potato harvest. Great to look forward to!

4 comments:

Sue said...

Must have been the day for meatloaf. We had it for lunch...a final great meal before the barrage of restaurant cooking. Nothing says the Midwest quite like meatloaf!!
Good deal with the taters. Now those we can grow with the cool summers.
Best to you!!
Sue

Erin said...

Beautiful potatoes! This was my first year growing them and our fingerlings didn't even last 2 weeks! I can't wait until next year to grow a few more varieties.

Mama Pea said...

Sue - I have to wonder how much the pioneers in our northern states made it through the winters on the root crops they could grow. I'm betting they ate a LOT of potatoes, carrots, turnips, rutabagas, beets and such!

Mama Pea said...

Erin - Who knew home grown taters could taste so much better than store bought ones, huh?

A couple of years ago we harvested close to 250# from our garden. We shared them with our daughter and son-in-law and ran out by spring!