the Cult of the Potato

My dad's family is from southern Idaho and one could say potatoes are literally in my blood, but, true confession: last year, 2008, was the first year I ever grew them myself. Now, they may be what I'm most looking forward to growing this year! As the Solanaceae go they're a damned sight more rewarding in this climate than their cousins, tomatoes and eggplants, and the harvest is kinda like a "treasure hunt" - you get down 'n dirty and root around like a truffle pig 'til you fill your netted bag with home-grown unchemicaled goodness. Yeah! :b

They're easy enough to grow, but not effortless. To maximize your crop you really should hill them up as the tops grow - the leaf nodes you bury on the lower stems send out roots which eventually form even more tubers. I planted them last March (St. Patty's is traditional in these parts) out on our parking strip at the nursery - not the most ornamental thing for our frontage on Leary Way but it's good loose, rich soil and seemed an ideal spot to conduct the experiment. I worked some of our super-duper Down To Earth certified organic All-Purpose fertilizer into the soil before planting them and covered them initially with about six inches of soil. They broke the surface in early April and started reaching for the sky...

By the time September rolled around they were in a waist-high "volcano" of dirt and I commenced with my truffle pig action - excellent harvest but WOW with the impracticality of a big mound like that in the average small city garden! This year we'll either grow them in big plastic garbage cans with drainage holes cut in the bottom (not the prettiest look) or, more likely, cylindrical cages of chicken wire wrapped around fence posts. Proponents/suppliers of small-space gardens as we are, potatoes are very suitable subjects for vertical gardens that make extreme good use of limited space. This year's harvest is looking good before it's even planted!

So, here's what you'll find in the store right now and here's what's coming: we're (hopefully temporarily) sold out of 'Yukon Gold' but still have a few bags of 'Nooksack', 'Russet Norkotah', 'Kennebec', 'Red Pontiac', 'Island Sunshine', 'Purple Majesty', 'Red Gold' and the fingerling varieties 'Red Thumb', 'Butterfinger', 'Russian Banana' and 'Rose Finn Apple'. We will also have - hopefully tomorrow! - the Washington state heirloom potato 'Ozette', brought up the west coast of the Americas by the Spanish in 1791, grown in obscurity on the NW tip of our Olympic Peninsula until their re-discovery in the 1980s. Not just a great story, they're actually the tastiest taters we know of - $6.98 a pound once they're here as they're still relatively rare, but once you've had them, you won't want to do without them!

Save some space for these guys. Even if you're not freaked out by the chemical content of non-organic taters or the high price of the "safe" organic ones, they're among the most satisfying things you can grow.