Harvesting the first potatoes of the season

Certain crops signal the beginning of the changing of the season and one of those veggies is the potatoes.

Last Friday we harvested the first of our potatoes of the season and took them to the market on Saturday where they sold out.

Over the last two months the plants have been growing so well thanks to the warm weather we had in March and we were excited to begin unearthing the potatoes hoping there would be lots.

From one harvest it looks like we will have a good yield of them this year mainly due to almost all the seed potatoes germinating and the plants growing very healthy.

The variety of potatoes we are growing is called Sifra. It is a Dutch variety that is a great all-around potatoes with lots of creaminess.

We get our seed potatoes from the large order that Full Belly Farm and Riverdog Farm do every year and our couple of bags are unnoticeable in their large order. It is great to be able to receive the high quality commercial seed potatoes that we would otherwise be unable to access on our own.

These first potatoes of the season are especially prized for being extra creamy as they have not had the time to develop all the starch. They are called New potatoes as they are from the new harvest and the freshest.

Additionally the skin on these potatoes is barely there and can be peeled off with just a touch of the hand. It is very important to keep the potatoes refrigerated but they likely will be eaten up very quickly.

The potatoes are the first of our veggies that love the warmer weather we are beginning to harvest but there are a few that are getting closer. The summer squash has some flowers and even a few of the tiniest squashes ever on the plants while the basil is getting close to its first harvest.

All of the crops enjoyed the rain we got Monday evening into Tuesday morning that ended up being five-eighths of an inch. It was not too hard of a rain so it didn’t damage the leaves of the plants and soaked into the ground by the morning.

The lettuce has been thriving and was very appreciative of the rain coupled with the cooler weather. It will be getting warm in the next couple of days so to have the soil moist will help reduce the stress of the plants from having to search for water.

Stressed out plants when the weather makes sudden shifts can lead to flowering and bolting which we want to avoid for as long as possible.

Right now we are harvesting all three varieties of little gems that we grow which has been a challenge to achieve this year.

One of the varieties the seed company stopped growing so we have had to save our own seed and a second one has been the birds’ favorite leading us to get some bird netting to protect it.