I bandicooted the first of the new potatoes today. (Bandicooting just means rooting around to find a few under the soil, disturbing the plant as little as possible so it can go on to produce more and finish its growing season). To store potatoes, you need to wait till the plant is fully mature and dying back, then harvest and cure them – which just means leaving them brushed but unwashed, in a single layer in a dry shady place for a week or so before moving them to a cool dark storage spot. In curing the skin thickens.
Bandicooted spuds though are new potatoes, and new potatoes are fresh, uncured, and they have skin so thin that it just scrubs off. They are creamy and smooth and a different thing entirely to cured supermarket spuds.
My potato crop last year was very sad. The plants wilted before they flowered, and the potatoes hadn’t finished developing. The largest were only golf ball size. We don’t eat a lot of potatoes – I tend to regard them as a seasonal vegetable rather than a storage staple – but new potatoes are such a treat I was determined to get a yield this year.
These ones are grown from certified Russet Burbank seed potatoes, a variety chosen because it is resistant to Verticillium wilt – which is what I think got my spuds last season and made the yield so pitiful. I also planted them in a giant pot, rather than in a bed, because Verticillium wilt hangs on in the soil, and very early – mid July – to avoid the flea beetles that spread bacterial wilt which is, the other possibility for my sad potatoes last year. I also gave eggplants a rest for a season to break the flea beetle breeding cycle.
So I’m a bit happy to see these guys, and looking forward to the rest of them in a few weeks. I have high hopes for enough to make gnocchi and potato bake and loaded roast spuds and …
They look so fresh and delicious before cooking, what month do you start to grow and do you use whole or cut up potato for planting?
I used whole, certified seed potatoes for this, and I planted them in mid July in the bottom of big pots covered with a few inches (50cm) of compost. Then as they grew, I topped the pot up till eventually the seed spuds would have been about 18 inches (50cm) deep.
That’s a terrific looking crop Linda. I also grow potatoes, and find that they easily regenerate because inevitably there are some that are left in the ground after harvesting. I thought I might have lost some due to the unusually wet weather we’ve had in the Scenic Rim. But their spot in a raised bed has been a good protective factor. I love spuds, so may they long continue!