Weighing In The Taters

I coerced Papa Pea into helping me dig up two rows of the potato patch this morning. These were the two rows that had gotten hit especially hard with blight and had virtually no vines left so I knew the potatoes in the soil weren't going to be doing any more growing.

I had dug up a portion of one of these rows a week or so ago to get some potatoes to eat because we haven't had any for ever so long, and I had a real hankering for some potato salad, plus my dear hubby had been dropping hints about how long it had been since we had had mashed potatoes and gravy. Potatoes have been selling at our organic co-op in town for $1.99 a pound and knowing I had some in the garden kept me from paying that. (I did get my potato salad after he got a meal of Swiss Steak, Mashed Potatoes and Gravy and Green Beans.)

I had taken 2-1/2 pounds when I raided the patch the other day and this morning we harvested another 9-1/2 pounds. So we got a total of 12 pounds from two rows each approximately 15 feet long. Admittedly, not a very good harvest.

The potatoes we sampled last week were solid, crisp and good flavored so these should be the same. The size has been disappointing though. I have a LOT of golf ball sized ones and only maybe three that I would call big. The rest are small to medium.

Now it'll be interesting to see what the other four rows in the patch yield. They will be our main crop of keepers for the winter . . . or as far into the winter as they will take us, so I'll leave them in the soil for a while yet.