If you plan to store your potatoes, don't harvest just after watering. A dry potato is a happy potato.
When harvesting, use a turning fork to loosen the area around each potato plant. Gently shake away potatoes from soil and roots with a fork or your hands, depending on how close you really want to get to mother earth.
Eat damaged potatoes immediately. Go inside and turn on that pot now.
Prepare good potatoes for storage by cleaning off the bulk of the soil, and placing between sheets of newspaper in a cool, frost free place. After one week, place them in paper bags or sacks.
What if the potatoes are green?
Green skin and/or flesh on potatoes is caused by sunlight. A well-covered potato will not turn green, so remember to keep current with your hilling. The green stuff is toxic when raw and bad-tasting when cooked. Cut out green portions of potatoes. This Alaska site offers more information on greening of potatoes.
Speaking of cooking and potatoes, before I grew them, I didn't like them at all. Since growing them, I have learned to appreciate these lovely, delicious and nutritious roots in many ways, but always with the skin on. The skin and the flesh closest to it is the most nutritious. If you don't like potato skin, but feel you want to eat the skin because you know how good it is for you, then don't grow a russet. Try a thin-skinned golden or red variety.
New potatoes are great boiled or steamed with a few sprigs of mint or rosemary. Shred up big potatoes and add chopped veggies of all kinds, a few eggs and pepper and pan fry for delicious hash-brown cakes. Barbeque new potatoes in foil over a real fire. Add mayonnaise, cilantro and steamed beets for a delicious potato salad. And what is a better comfort food than a bowl of well-mashed mashed potatoes? Whatever you do, eat your potatoes -- They're good for you!
Raw Data for the Potassium Starved and Silly Potato Links
Dufferin County Potato Tour
One of the best ways to find out how potatoes are grown is to observe potato growing from the early spring, just before the potatoes are planted, until they are harvested in the fall. This site follows one field of potatoes from planting to harvesting.
Prince Edward Island Potato Museum
| Here's the follow-up discussion on this article: | View all related messages |
For a complete listing of article comments, questions, and other discussions related to Jojo Sigurgeirson's Perennials topic, please visit the Discussions page.