Papa, Pomme De Terre, Spud: What About Them Taters?! Growing and Storing Potatoes for Sustenance

On our homestead we are always working towards meeting our needs in the most practical (and delicious) ways.

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One way we do this is by growing potatoes.

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They are an easy crop, store well and can be eaten in a myriad of ways. They are the easiest staple food for us to grow, and are a great comfort food loaded with nutrition.

Big thanks and respect to all the ingenious folks from South America who bred such a dizzying array of diversity from a mildly toxic tuber. In Peru we both realized how little we knew about this important food crop. Potato culture is alive and strong there. Why are they known as Irish potatoes anyway???

But what about all those rocks?

Digging for potatoes or.....

From Rocks to Spuds

Well if you've been following us you'll know we have inherited an excess of rocks in the soil. Slowly but surely the piles grow as we move rocks from the soil into piles at the edge of the garden. When breaking ground, we will usually put potatoes in as a first crop. They aren't too picky and can tolerate poor soils better than other crops. That said fertile loamy soils grow the best spuds. For us, it's just about getting some food on the table!

The digging is done by mattock or grub hoe. Good luck tryin to get anywhere with a shovel! As we dig furrows, the rocks just keep coming. Although it's really hard work, I can attest to the joy of digging my hand into a previously worked beds to find rich humus where rocks used to be. As we remove the rocks, we're making space for biomass.

Planting

We purchased seed potatoes from out local feed store. Eventually once we can get long term storage sorted, we will select our favorite varieties to grow, but for now good 'ol Kennebec and Yukon Gold do just fine. After cutting the spuds to one or 2 eyes, we let let dry out for a day before planting.

It's so satisfying (and forgiving) to plant potatoes. They're pretty darn hardy and want to grow. I remember the first year we grew them and as we ate our fill we were remarking how satisfying and grounded it feels to literally fill our belly and feed our bodies from the soil. This fuels the fire after many hours of digging.

My Mom and sister were here visiting in early April and helped us get 50 pounds in the ground. This is twice the amount we seeded last year and have started harvesting the first patch. We limed the soil and added some wood ash before planting. By no means was the soil of excellent tilth, but plant we did. We planted the sections of tubers as deep as was reasonable (about 3 inches) and waited for the shoots to show themselves.

Low Maintenance

I love potatoes for a lot of reasons, one is that once planted we can basically walk away and come back to harvest. I weeded and mounded the potatoes once this season, and watered them a few times. We actually never got around to mulching (oops) but even with little care we're enjoying fresh potatoes on the daily. While we could certainly increase yields and optimize our plantings, it is very rewarding to grow nuggets of mineral rich carbohydrates with relatively little effort, while also "breaking new ground" and de-rocking for future garden use.

Harvest

Once the majority of the plants have died back, we start on the search for treasure. Using a potato fork (wonder why it's called that) we carefully dig at the base of the plants. I always laugh when the amount of rocks harvested is bigger than potatoes. It's like we're growing spuds to further incentivize de-rocking! It makes me think of tossing grain to encourage pigs to dig and till an area.

It's still a joy to fill buckets or crates with plump (and some not so plump) tubers. For growing in poor soil riddled with rocks, I'm happy to harvest tubers. The key here is not stabbing too many as they won't store well. The victims of such an event are eaten sooner and not stored. I like to get my hands in there once I've lifted the soil as there are always some spuds hiding there after the first sweep.

Making Them Last

For some of the spuds we planted later we will leave in the ground as long as possible. The ones we did harvest sat at room temp in a covered milk crate to dry out a bit and cure for storage. Ideally they would be kept in a cellar at around Earth temp. We are looking at simply digging a hole and burying buckets or barrels to keep them cool. In the long term we plan to build a banging root cellar, but this year it's looking like good old fashioned hole will work just fine.

Our neighbors swear by canning their potatoes. I love canned food for the durability and convenience, but I'm not overly interested in canning something that has the staying power of potatoes. In prior years, we kept them quite well in our yurt, even though it's not a temperature regulated space.

but what about dem rocks!?!?!

Serve Them Up

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Did we mentioned that we love potatoes? We have been eating them lately in chicken soup, as hash browns, mashed... I might make latkes soon too (a type of shredded potato fritter). Not getting sick of them yet.

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In Peru we were amazed at all the ways they prepared potatoes from freeze drying them to fermented them on mats under water. The last method yields a beverage call Tocosh which smells kind of like barn, is certainly an acquired taste and contains penicillin. And that concludes the random factoid of the post...

What are your favorite ways to eat potatoes?