Baby Dutch Yellow Potatoes

We've bought little bags of Melissa's Baby Dutch Yellow Potatoes at the grocery store and I just love them. But what the heck are they? I've tried googling for seed potatoes for them with no luck. Is that just a trade name? Anyone know more about these tasty little rascals? I would love to grow my own.

You should be able to buy the potatoes at the grocery store then let them sprout, once sprouted cut off an eye making sure to leave a good amount of meat on it, set out to seal the cut or a few days then plant and grow your own. I do this to all the potatoes that we grow and eat. Always works for me. HOPE THIS HELPS.

Melissa's is definitely not organic--so they might be sprayed to inhibit sprouting, but maybe not.

I planted a looooooong sprout of a Yukon Gold potato last summer. It had been in the closet too long. I stuck it in the top of one of my compost bins. It did get a little sunburned but started to grow quickly. Was a really pretty healthy vine and I harvested more than 5 lbs. of potatoes from that one vine.

Donna

Oh, I've tried that a couple of times. They must be treated, because they never sprout. Sigh.

Yep, some store-bought potatoes are sprayed with an inhibitor to slow down sprouting. However, you can put your potatoes in a sunny window (or porch or whatever) and the anti-sprouting chemical will break down allowing your spuds to start sprouting. This is done not only due to the actual sunlight but also from fluctuating temperatures. You should give it a try on those Dutch Yellow potatoes, woofie.

Shoe

Oh, thank you! I was wondering if there was a way to circumvent that chemical! I will give that a try.

Cool! Will be looking forward to your progress report! And pics!

Happy Gardening!

Shoe

Ha ha, got to go buy some more now; we ate them all!

Oh m'goo'ness, they must really be worth growing then if they went that fast! I'll have to see if I can find some locally.

Shoe

try the big W shoe

They have a small grocery store near the post office, they are never busy since its a grocery store only, so I will often fill all the water bottles at the culligan water dispenser there because its fast--for some reason its about 20 feet from the produce section (why? makes no sense to me, they should have it over with the bottled water). They have absolutely no organic produce there at all.

This message was edited Feb 16, 2009 8:20 PM

Okay, thanks. I don't often go there but last nite DD and I went, to buy discounted chocolate Valentine's candy, of all things! (We raked it in!) *grin

shoe

chocolate's definitely excluded from the all organic rule here too--I wish I had known to look.
;)

I'm wondering if the "baby dutch yellow" potatoes are just small sized Bintjes.

Here is the listing at PotatoGarden.com
https://stores.myregisteredsite.com/user1433018/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=PG&Product_Code=7SNBIN&Category_Code=CSP

I had wondered that too. I also came across a reference to Yellow Dutch and Yellow Finn mentioned in the same breath, as tho they were more or less the same. That caught my eye because when we moved to our present house, the previous owner had planted some potatoes that she said were called "something Finnish" and they were very similar to those baby dutch. Heh, haven't been able to find those either...yet.

I have a 2lb bag of the baby yellow dutch taters- I also wondered if they may just be tiny Yukon Golds? I am planning to grow YG this year- they always sprout well in my pantry. In fact a couple of months ago I could have started a big garden with some that took off sprouting! Too early here, though. I plan to try the planting in leaves this year since I have an abundance of leaves in my yard all bagged up. I will run them through the string mulcher before using them.

Yukon Gold are good, but I tried growing those and the yellow dutch are better! If I can't get any from the store to sprout (got a new bag yesterday and set a couple in the window like Shoe suggested), I'm going to try to track down some of the Yellow Finn and try them. Anyone know a source for the Yellow Finn?

Try the PotatoGarden.com. They usually have a good selection of yellow potatoes. We like the German Butterball, Yellow Finn and Dutch Bintjes.

This is probably a dumb question- are the Baby Dutch Yellows just a mini variety, or will they grow big like Yukon Gold?

No, that's an interesting question. My guess would be that they'd grow to be normal size. If I can get these little rascals to sprout, we may find out. :-)

I've been reading the posts about potatoes and can't wait to try growing them this year. I checked a couple websites and check DG to see if the feedback was good. Well the two companies I was interested in had terrible comments. I'm interested in getting potatoes, onions, horseradish root, strawberries and would like to get this all from one company. Any recommendations and advice is appreciated.

I order seed potatoes from http://www.ronnigers.com/ They do have onions but not berries. They have a great selection and their seed potatoes are great!

Thanks. I'll check them out.

You might also check out The Natural Gardening Company. I just placed an order for some Yellow Finn seed potatoes from them along with some interesting sounding melon seeds. Their shipping charges seem a bit more reasonable and they do have strawberries. The reviews in the Garden Watchdog, although few, were all favorable. They sell certified organic, too. Here is a link: www.naturalgardening.com

I've ordered both transplants and seeds from the Natural Gardening Company and had excellent results. The seedlings were very healthy and produced well. The seeds had a high rate of germination. Customer service was excellent. I highly recommend this company.

Thank you - I'll pay the website a visit tonight!

Peaceful Valley has all the things you are looking for. I have had great service from them and their prices are much lower. http://www.groworganic.com/default.html

Thanks GrammysGardenAZ - they have a great selection of products

Oh my, Grammy, they do have a nice selection. I'll have to remember them. I'm just experimenting with potatoes this time. If this try works out, it looks like they would be a less expensive source for larger quantities.
For the tiny order I placed, the shipping was better for me from Natural Gardening Co., plus I wanted to try some of the unusual melon seeds they offer. Well, they're unusual to me. :-)

I love melons! What kind did you order?

I ordered these two: Noir des Carmes Melon and Crane Melon (a type of Crenshaw melon)
There were a couple of others I wanted to try, but I don't have a lot of luck with melons here, so I didn't want to get too carried away buying seeds. Especially since I'm going to have to replace ALL my vegetable seeds after mice got into my seed storage area a few weeks back. The fruit of the Noir des Carmes is different looking, very lobed and apparently starts out black, then turns more orange when ripe. Take a look at the pictures on their site. I wanted to try this one, too, Prescott Fond Blanc. Maybe next year.

I love the variety that PVFS offers but have had mixed experiences in dealing with their customer service/order department, especially in recent months.

Now you tell me, I ordered about an hour ago. Guess we'll see!

Grammy, I still order quite a bit from PVFS every year - so don't please don't get me wrong. I was responding to the discussion was about The Natural Gardening Company.

If I were ordering seeds or live plants and the same selections were offered by PVFS and Natural Gardening, I would order from Natural Gardening Company first. NGC's plants have always been packed extremely well and been very healthy and delivered with care. The shipments from PVFS has often failed to follow specific shipping instructions that I had provided, resulting in delays in receiving my packages.

I am a beginner gardener, but last year I took potatoes from the grocery store and cut them up and let them sit a day or two, like they say to. Planted them and they were growing beautiful plants.

Then the grasshoppers came along and ate all the leaves.

So this year, how do I keep the grasshopers away?

Hmmm, that's interesting. Maybe it's just because this is most likely a slow time of year for them, but I've emailed NGC a couple of times because of concerns about my seed potatoes getting frozen in shipment (it's COLD here right now) and they have responded in a matter of minutes. Communication at least is very good. But I have PVFS bookmarked anyway.

Edited to add: Oh dear....grasshoppers? Hope someone has a suggestion, 'cause I'd love to hear one too! Fortunately, we don't USUALLY have a problem with them here, but last year they were certainly noticeable!

This message was edited Feb 24, 2009 8:25 PM

LOL! Something is getting lost in translation here. I said I would order from NGC over PVFS because of the excellent customer service offered by NGC. They have always been swift to respond and very, very helpful and do everything possible to ensure that your plants arrive in great condition.

Don't pay any attention to me--not only do I get confused, but I manage to confuse everyone else, too! All I meant was that I was impressed with how responsive NGC has been. Both sound like good sources for stuff.

I placed an order with PVFS yesterday. Had not ordered from them before. I only ordered garden/fert supplies. The main problem is that even tho their prices are quite reasonalble, the shipping is costly. Cost as much for shipping as the supplies.

woofie, you are much closer to Spokane than I so I expect you go there for bloodmeal, superphosphte, etc. I have a large garden and need more than 5 lbs, so that is why the shipping is expensive. It is now 7 degrees outside. Not a cloud in the sky so should warm reasonably fast after the sun rises.

Donna

Donna, we actually have a pretty good source of supply right here in town. Our feed store carries a good selection of garden supplies and will generally order anything we need. It was cheaper to get my gallon containers from them than to order them online.

Tomato seedlings are up in the greenhouse!

The melon seeds I ordered from NGC got here Saturday and I KNOW it's too early to start them....exercise restraint, exercise restraint....