2023 Garden Planning: Potato Edition
Past potato plants standing in for our future potato plants.
A major part of garden planning is not just coming up with which fruits and vegetables we’ll grow, but deciding where we’ll buy the seeds from.
When it comes to potatoes, we have the option of buying them locally, either from our Farm Co-Op or our Farm Market. This is great because we know for sure that we’ll get potatoes that are adapted for our climate, but it means that we are limited to whatever varieties they decide to have in stock.
Last year, the potato offerings at the Co-Op were Prada, Burbank, and Red Pontiac—two varieties that I wasn’t really interested in trying to grow again (Burbank and Red Pontiac), and one variety that I’d never heard of (Prada). We didn’t know that the Farm Market offered seed potatoes, so we didn’t check, but we’ll definitely be checking this year once they have their seed potatoes in stock (likely not until late March or April).
Our massive harvest of Prada and Burbank potatoes. Somehow I ended up with no pictures of the Red Pontiacs.
We kinda liked the Prada variety, but not enough that I want to base my entire potato plan for the year on them. I had tried to grow Burbank and Red Pontiac potatoes in 2020, but had a fairly pathetic harvest with lackluster results, and even after making improvements to our potato growing in 2021, the Burbank and Red Pontiacs we grew last year, I’ve definitely decided that I don’t want to grow them again. We mail ordered some Kennebec, Superior, and Red Gold potatoes late last summer for a second round of potatoes, and we were very happy with the Kennebecs and Red Gold varieties, but underwhelmed by the Superior potatoes (they were… inferior, har har har).
To hedge our bets and make sure we get potato varieties that we definitely want for our 2023 garden, we put in our seed potato order in late November. It’s possible that we’re paying a mail-order premium for seed potato varieties that our local Farm Market will carry, but I don’t want to risk not getting them.
So far for this coming garden year, we’ve ordered two pounds each of the following seed potatoes:
From what I’ve been reading, German Butterball is supposed to taste like a Yukon Gold dipped in butter and turned up to 11, and I want to see if they live up to that level of hype. They store really well, which is great if we end up with the kind of bumper crop that leaves us swimming in the multiple bushels of potatoes that we (not so) secretly hope that we harvest.
I have to admit, the whole reason I ever wanted to try growing Kennebec potatoes came from watching this video on YouTube (the link will start the vid at the part where they talk about the potatoes, but the whole video, and the follow up on what he does with all of those potatoes is worth the watch).
I saw these while seed potato shopping last year and thought they looked cool. That’s it… that’s the whole reason I bought them. Oh! And also because they were one of the few varieties still in stock when I got around to buying seed potatoes (wayyy too late last year). They don’t particularly store very well, but they’re waxy like normal red potatoes, with that tender/buttery flavor of yellow potatoes. We really liked them and have decided to include them again this year.
We’ll still be checking out the Co-Op and Farm Market come spring to see if there are any cool varieties available—well, specifically the Farm Market. While the Co-Op does technically carry seed potatoes, they don’t really care much about stocking anything cool or exotic. We noticed with their seed garlic last fall that they did carry a wide range of varieties and I’m hoping they carry that over with their seed potato selection when they open again in the spring.
NOTE: I don’t know if I NEED to say this or not, but those links to the online store where I bought my seed potatoes are NOT affiliate links, I just included them as a resource to anyone who might be interested.
