Saturday, August 17, 2013

The First Potatoes

Supposedly, after your potato plants blossom there will be large enough "new" potatoes formed for you to carefully extract a few from under the plant.  And who doesn't like the flavor of new potatoes straight from the garden?

Papa Pea does not like me to steal any of these small spuds; he would prefer I wait until they've had a chance to grow into BIG taters.  More bang for your buck, ya know.

Today I wanted some potatoes for a special dinner our daughter is going to prepare here at our house tomorrow.  I had no potatoes in the house.  But I knew where there were some.  (Shhhhh!)


I really hit the jackpot on that big one, didn't I?  Note the full-sized egg I included in the picture for size comparison.








(Darn.  Now I'm wondering how big that big potato would have gotten if I'd left it in the ground another month.  Darn.)

22 comments:

tpals said...

Wow! Those are some impressive spuds, especially with your weather this year.

Sandy Livesay said...

Mama Pea,

Those are some nice looking potatoes. And the large one is pretty massive. I'm wondering if you left it longer if it would be a little woody?

My potatoes both sweet and regular are still growing, I will harvest them when the tops turn brown.

Michelle said...

I have a few plants that the squirrel didn't get. Hopefully he let me some potatoes. At this point I would even take small ones.

Susan said...

OMG, I've never seen a redskinned spud that size! And I won't tell Papa Pea where you got those taters. I have to start digging mine, once my weekends go back to being mine, that is. Are you going to share (virtually) this special meal of Chicken Mama's?

Tombstone Livestock said...

Don't tell the commissioner but I think one of your potatoes is on steroids.

DFW said...

Nice looking potatoes. I love the small ones!

My few little measely spuds didn't make it this year. Too wet. The sweet potato vines are growing well so I hope to get a few.

Sunnybrook Farm said...

They don't ship as well so it is hard to find a new potato in the grocery, You don't have to peel them and they just fall apart in your mouth.

Amy Dingmann said...

Looks great! I would love to grow potatoes but we're still working with the soil here. Root vegetables just don't want to grow here in our clay. :( You're making me hungry though! They look awesome!

2 Tramps said...

Your spuds are lovely! We didn't plant any this year but wish we would have now. We got hit with a severe hail storm on Friday evening and lost a good portion of our garden. At least potatoes would have been safe underground!

Anonymous said...

We had volunteer potatoes this year, but because I didn't hill them, we didn't get a lot. I am thinking of trying the wire cages next year, as ours tend to rot here on the coast in the wet dirt. I won't say a word to Papa Pea!

Mama Pea said...

tpals - The "old-timers" up here have always said that if nothing else makes it in the garden, you can usually depend on the root crops. (Good thing.)

Mama Pea said...

Sandy - My potato vines are starting to look a little bedraggled, but they're not brown yet either.

Mama Pea said...

Michelle - Well, those darn pesky squirrels! I'm happy to say I've never had that problem. Hope you do get at least some medium sized taters.

Mama Pea said...

Susan - The meal Chicken Mama made yesterday was for Papa Pea's birthday, but we all worked so darn hard all day (Papa Pea said he was only doing what he really wanted to do!) that we commented when we sat down to dinner that we all looked so rag-tag that we'd better not take pictures! The meal was his request of meat loaf, mashed potatoes and gravy and spinach with melted mozzarella on top. (A guy menu, right?)

Mama Pea said...

Tombstone Livestock - Hahahahaha!

(Uh-oh, we ate it. Is that bad?)

Mama Pea said...

DFW - Wish we could grow sweet potatoes (love 'em!) here, but our weather is just not warm enough. Bummer that you lost all your regular taters. :o(

Mama Pea said...

Sunnybrook Farm - We rarely peel our own potatoes. They taste so good with those bits of red peeling in the mix. Especially in potato soup, I think. When you leave the skins on they're called "farm potatoes." Yum.

Mama Pea said...

Amy - I hear you about the need to get your soil up to snuff. We battled LOTS of hard, red clay on our first piece of property up here. Amazing how a 2" long carrot could be twisted in four different directions!

Mama Pea said...

2 Tramps - Oh, darn, so sorry to hear about your hail storm last week. So frustrating and such a helpless feeling to be able to do anything about a thing like that. Hope some of the garden comes back from it.

Mama Pea said...

Ruth - When I planted the potatoes, I threw the eyes that didn't look so good in the compost heap and you can guess where the biggest, strongest, and most lush potato vines grew!

I can see where you would have to go to something other than the traditional in-the-ground method in a place like yours where you get so much moisture.

Endah Murniyati said...

I haven't ever eating red potato. In Indonesia, we just can find yellowish potato. Look so interesting, especially the big one.

Mama Pea said...

Endah - We only grow red potatoes because we think they have so much more flavor than white or yellow potatoes. Papa Pea just read an article, however, that claimed that purple potatoes contain lots of antioxidants so we may try some of those next year.