Pandemic Potato Harvest

Last January, I ordered seed potatoes from Johnny’s, because they have the best price and selection; I have deep suspicions that other companies don’t want to mess with the home grower trade any longer, when it comes to potatoes. All Blue and Yukon Gold were on the purchase rotation this year. Usually, they arrive in early April, which is a little late for me because I like to raise them with as little water as possible, so I plant in mid-March.  I deal.

This year, I planted my saved seed potatoes on time and prepped the other bed, and waited. No potato box. And waited.  No box. The weather was perfect for potato planting.  And waited. “It’s the pandemic,” I thought. “They are behind.” Finally, I emailed. We had a bad potato year, they told me. First a freeze, then the pandemic. We don’t have your potatoes. This is Bad News for an Irish potato eater!  It was mid-April.  It was too late to order from anyone else—and they were not the only company in potato crisis—so I dug into the last sad, small All Blue potatoes in my basement storage. Wrinkled. Sprouted. Small—the rejects of a winter’s rummaging in the bag for the right sizes for that dinner. Oh well, I thought, let’s toss them in. Can’t hurt. They filled about two thirds of a bed. I added a couple of extra tomato plants to fill it, allowed a volunteer pumpkin to grow on one side, and let it grow.

The vines never grew huge, unlike the other bed of potatoes, planted back in March. They died back early, too. I did not have high hopes, but I let them be. Today, I looked at the bed, at the fall starts sitting on the potting bench, waiting for the potatoes to come out so they could have a home, and decided it was time. I pulled back the straw mulch and started digging. Several small hills were cleared out and then I hit a Big potato. Not bad, I thought. More Big potatoes, mixed in with the usual small and medium sized tubers. I tossed them into the waiting paper bag, which filled up quickly.  When I was done, I carried them inside to the scale. Eighteen pounds. Not the best All Blue harvest—we’ve gone up to about 40 pounds on new seed stock—but not too shabby, either.  And knowing that you never get them all, there might be a few surprises underneath the fall crops that I planted out afterwards.