Perfect Heirloom Potatoes

A few weeks ago, I ordered from Seed Saver’s Exchange, a seed potato sampler pack. I read several books recently that include sections about different kinds of potatoes, and never before realized that there are so many varieties. They come in many sizes, shapes, textures and colors, including blue and lavender! I first read about this in Barbara Kingsolver’s book: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, then again in Michael Pollan’s The Botany of Desire, and In Defense of Food.

I want to plant a variety, but our local nurseries only seem to carry the standard Russets, Reds, and Yukon Golds, all of which I have grown before. Seed Saver’s Exchange offered the only sampler pack I found, a 20 pound package which included 8 different heirloom varieties. That’s more than I really wanted, so I plan to plant two crops: one within the next couple of weeks for summer and fall eating and sharing with friends and family, and another crop in early June for winter harvest, storage, and seed for next year.

Yesterday, my order arrived in a cardboard box which contained eight labeled drawstring cloth bags each holding a little more than two pounds of perfect-looking certified seed potatoes, red yellow, orange, blue and lavender. They are beautiful!

“Just potatoes”, you say? No, no, no! These are perfect potatoes. These potatoes are pretty, and some of them feel velvety to the touch. I can save seed and get the same product again year after year because they are heirlooms. That means that a company like Monsanto has not genetically modified them. These potatoes are special. I am participating in saving a food heritage that is/was nearly lost. The Indians in the Andes Mountains grew 600 different varieties of potatoes, and until recently, I only knew of three.



The directions say to set them out in the light a week or two before planting to encourage the buds to sprout, so I carefully opened each bag, removed about half the contents, arranged them in groups on a towel, and labeled each group with the potato name and days-to-harvest, which varies from 80 to 120 days. I will store the other half in the refrigerator in the garage until June.

I used to dust my seed potatoes with Diazinon before planting because that is what I was taught, but I’d like to grow these organically, or at least without chemicals. My garden has lots of composted grass clippings and fruit tree leaves mixed in. I will plant some bush beans among the potatoes to add nitrogen to the soil, and some marigolds to repel some pests, but I have more research to do to figure out how to keep all the pests away from them. Please comment on this post if you’d like to share suggestions.