First picking - new potatoes! Hooray!

Just picked my first potatoes for this new. They are "All-Blue" and 2 "All-Red". I think you can all figure out which is which! I just love new potatoes...

Who else is picking? Let's see those spuds!!
Claire

Nice i dug mine in may

I ate the first ones already.

Wow phicks....sure must be nice to have potatoes that early! You've got the climate we all wish we had (or at least some of us wish we had). What kind did you grow?

Well shoot, I guess I'm just behind the times!! I planted late because of all our floods, etc.

Red pontiacs german butter balls ill be puting my fall crop in the first of Sept how did the blues taste

I didn't eat one yet. I picked 'em after supper! Silly me!! I'll tell you tomorrow!

German butter balls sound good - never tried those!

Like your "potato face." My husband is fond of picking vegetables then leaving them on the table in interesting configurations - designs, faces, etc. It's cute and often hilarius. I wonder if other people do this. Don't we gardeners just have crazy fun : )

Well I was just so happy to be picking, I had to put my potatoes into a happy face! I put my zucchini into a circle the other day like a daisy. I didn't take a picture of it though. Must be a crazy gardener habit!! LOL.

I have to admit I poked around under a couple of my plants to get some "new" potatoes for a meal. I love new potatoes!
The plants are beginning to yellow, but I thought that since the plants were not dead yet that the potatoes may still be growing. So, I am leaving them in the ground until the plants die.
Does anyone know this to be true?

Forgot to say, yours look great!

I do think that's true Cyndie - they probably get bigger during that time. My plants aren't really yellowing yet. I got mine in REALLY late though, because of all our flooding here. They just finished flowering for me last week.
Claire

thats true

Thanks, Claire and phicks,
Then I will try to restrain myself and let them go...
One thing I have noticed this year is that some potato varieties have prettier flowers than others.
I had a potato spot next to a flower bed last year and must have "missed" one, since I have a plant there this year. It is either a red or purple flesh potato. My neighbors remark every time they see it how pretty a plant it is. They are surprised to hear it is a potato. LOL
My main plot of potatoes either did not bloom or I missed it. Either way, they are starting to yellow. The varieties I planted this year do well in Maine, so I think they are pretty much on schedule.
Baked them tonight with pork steaks, onions and summer squash in a mustard herb sauce. Yummm

Hi Cyndie!

Great to hear that you had an unexpected plant this year. I had that happen this year also. So I had a few extra "Peruvian Purple" variety. I think that potato flowers are absolutely beautiful. I noticed that my "All Blue" variety had mauve colored flowers this year. The "All Red" and the "Kerr's Pink" varieties are white flowered. What types do well for you in Maine? My parents live north-east of you in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Your dinner sounds fabulous - I would have loved that meal!
Claire

Hi Claire,
I grew up in Iowa, so I am hopelessly addicted to good lean pork! When I come home to visit I always freeze some Iowa Chops and bring them home. Hard to do now with the luggage weight limits. LOL
My uncle lives in Norwalk.
The potatoes I am growing this year are Norland and Yukon. I love the yellow flesh of the Yukon.
I would like to know what you consider your best potato. I know Maine is known for its potatoes, but I like to know what tastes good in home gardens.
As far as the flowers go, the renegade potato was either a red or purple(I'll know when I harvest) and it had a beautiful purple tinged flower. So much so, that it would make me consider putting a potato bed in between flower beds again. The foliage was so pretty, too.
This year we are getting so much rain and I have also installed soaker hoses. It has made a huge difference.
I know several people who have places in Nova Scotia. Beautiful place on my list of must-do's. But I have to ask if their weather is any worse or any better than Maine? This past winter was enough for me to lurk on the Southwest Forum and consider moving. LOL

Wow Cyndie - small world! I love Iowa pork (especially the bacon!!). Lately I buy Beeler's pork products. They are a local producer who uses no antibiotics/hormones etc and no nitrates/nitrites in curing their pork. It is FABulous stuff. They also let their pigs go free range - no hog confinement. Norwalk is not so far from me. I live in Van Meter now.

I love the Yukon Gold too. It is a great potato. It is only my second year growing potatoes, so it's hard for me to answer about the best potato. Last year I grew Peruvian Purple, Yukon Gold, and La Ratte fingerling. This year I was late ordering so I could only get the All Blue, All Red, and Kerr's Pink. Got 'em from Seed Savers Exchange up in Decorah, Iowa. I loved the Yukons last year. The All Blue new potatoes have a really sweet, nutty taste to me. I just want to keep trying new varieties. I will definitely grow the Yukons again. I use drip irrigation from Orbit. It works really well for me and saves on water bills. I just bought 2 "potato bags" from Gardener's Supply to try for next year also, to cut back on the work of hilling them.

Amazingly, my parents in Halifax are a zone 6a. This is because they get positive warming influence from the ocean in winter. Year before last I drove home for Christmas as a surprise for them. The ONLY place I encountered snow was Maine and New Brunswick. None in Nova Scotia once I got there. Everybody in Iowa thinks I must be "used to the cold" but in fact Iowa is colder (5a) than Nova Scotia! This past winter was a bad one for my parents too - way more snow than usual. I think that was a pretty common thing across the eastern coastal areas.

Claire

I envy all of you who have harvested potatoes already but I don't think it will be much longer for me as I see some plants are yellowing or have finished flowering. Last year for the first time I harvested new potatoes about now and then left the plants to hopefully produce more. Come September I was shocked at the size of the new ones - prolific and nice and big on all varieties. So it works! maybe picking some new ones stimulates the others to grow and get big - don't know. So Cyndie, enjoy some of your new ones - there should be plenty coming on afterwards!
Phicks, German Butterballs are among my favorite too. I plant only yellow potatoes because the only yellow variety you can get in the store around here is the Yukon Golds, which I also enjoy. The yellow ones just seem to taste more buttery or something. I get my potatoes from Ronnigers (www.ronnigers.com) and he has a nice selection of yellow fleshed ones plus super prices if you buy 5 or 7 varieties. This year in addition to Butterball I planted Agria, Romance (red skin,yellow flesh - yummy and pretty), Bintji, and the Russian Banana for salads. It has been very dry here this summer at critical times and then we will get a downpour so I'm not sure what the results will be. I understand that potatoes do not have to bloom to produce well.
Claire, I have never eaten a blue potato. Do they taste any different? Congrats on getting a crop after contending with all that flooding! I also put my potatoes in a bit later this year but that was due to being away in the spring. But it won't be much longer! Jessica

Hi Jessica,

I don't find that the blue ones taste any different. If you boil them they tend to lose their color. If you saute them or bake them, they don't. I think they are fun to eat when mixed with pink and white ones. If you make a potato salad, though, you don't want the color to leach out into the mayo or that would look too weird. The purple Peruvians were much more deep purple-blue than the "All-Blue" that I grew this year. They are a much paler shade of purple-blue. They're all fun to grow though! I should look at Ronniger's for next year!

Claire

Hey Cyndie - Happy Birthday!

Thanks for thinking of me, Claire!
It's a doubly good day. Friday AND Birthday.
Have a good weekend! Cyndie

some of mine from may

Those are nice, phicks. I like to leave the skins on, and those have nice thin ones. What variety is that?

They are Red Pontiac

I dug mine in May and canned most but diced and froze some of them. Fixin to plant some fall potatoes this week but don't know which variety as yet. I have never planted them in the fall before so I don't really know how the outcome will be. Goin to the feed store to pick some up Monday and I guess it just depends on which varieties they have available.
Susie

I dug down in the straw today to check on the potatoes and found a nice cool toad.

Thanks Claire for the input on the blue potatoes. I am intrigued. Ronniger's carries 4 different varieties including your "All Blue". Maybe I'll order some next year for fun. Good tip about the mayonnaise!! You will not be disappointed with Ronniger's. I find the quality of his potatoes to be super. Jessica

Had some nice baked 'King Edward VII's tonight. Hard top get a "real" baked potato in France, but these were Idaho spud starchy, ans some of the best baked potatoes I've ever eaten. My vines have neen yellow for a couple weeks. I just dig them as needed.

Also grew for the first time 'Buonotte de Noitmoutier', an 'early potato' variety grown on the French Atlantic island of Noirmoutier, where they are fertilized with seagull feces and composted seaweed, neither of which I have access to. It doesn't matter. These have a very distinctively 'nutty' flavour that is hard to beat.

I'll be growing both of these again next year.

Potagere

I have volunteer "Vitolette"s everywhere from an early experiment. In fact, I have them in some places that I can't understand how they got there if they did not broadcast seed! This purple/blue potato's ,ost distinguishing culinary feature (other than its color, of course) is that it is extremely starchy. I think these 'blue' potatoes are often "dried" in the Andes and then reconstituted into a sort of gruel. I like them, but my wige is definitely not a fan.

Those Vitolette potatoes sound interesting. I wonder what it would take to get a couple of the tubers through customs! Maybe I can find them this side of the pond. The Noirmoutier sound lovely indeed.

Do You live in the USA ?

Yes, I live in Iowa, but Potagere lives in France, so it would be hard for him to send me a potato tuber.

Second picking - Red Cloud

Wow! Beautiful potatoes. What a rich color they have. I hope they taste as good as they look!!

CMoxon you can get the blue or the purple ones in the usa to Nice Poatoes LTilon are they pink inside to ? Paul

No, they're very very white.

Not as waxy as I'd expected, more flaky/fluffy.

Tom Thumb is light pink in side