Growing potatoes: the moment of truth

There’s a problem with growing potatoes – or any root vegetables, really.  You can’t tell what they’re doing, under the dirt. You can’t even tell if they’re doing anything at all.  If you’re me, you suspect it’s all for show, that the plant has no intention of producing potatoes, that it might even be laughing at your optimism. You watch the leaves grow, bide your time, and at some point you just say a little prayer and go digging.

The general advice I’ve heard about potatoes is to wait until the plants die back (or until fall, if they don’t die), and then harvest them.  A week ago, our potato plants were tall, green, and happy.  Then, over the past week, they died on us.  Leaves wilted, stems turned brown, and they clearly weren’t going to grow anymore.

It was time to find out what was happening under the dirt.

My hopes and fears were great.  On one hand, I had visions of armloads of spuds in that bag, just waiting for us to find them – we’d be eating potatoes from our garden all winter long.  On the other hand, there was no evidence I could see that there were any potatoes at all.  We would dig, and dig, and get only dirty hands for our efforts.  (That, I told Nathan, would make me cry.)

My expectations were somewhere in between, but much closer to the side of no potatoes than too many.  If there were any at all, I’d count it as a success.

And what did we find?

Potatoes!  Not armloads, not a year’s supply. but handfuls of them, enough for a good meal.  (Incidentally, the biggest single crop of anything from the garden so far this year.)  Pretty little purple-skinned potatoes.  Success.

They were tasty, too, and I understand now why people grow them rather than just buying them at the store. They had a flavor all their own, more potato-ey than other potatoes, and they were light and fresh.  We had them for breakfast, sliced and pan-fried with olive oil and chives.

We just might have to do this again next year – and perhaps even devote a second container to them.