Purple Potatoes

I recently left town for a few days and in my absence whiteflies descended on my Adirondack Blue potatoes. They didn't touch the white or red spuds planted in adjacent squares, JUST the blues. Hmmm.... :suspect:
I treated the plants as best I could but after 2 weeks they've shown no sign of bouncing back so I dug 'em up today. I planted these February 1 so they've had 4 full months in the Mel's Mix. This was the harvest from 3 plants.

Not bad all things considered. However, I've wondered why they were called Adirondack Blue instead of Adirondack Purple.

Then I cooked 'em (boiled, not baked) and they turned a blue jean denim blue.

They tasted exactly like a potato. The color is just that, color. It has no effect on the flavor. My 10 year old son thought it was the coolest thing in the world to have blue/purple potatoes. I still have another square of them and he's already asking me to mash those so he can eat purple mashed potatoes.

WOW Tim that is the coolest thing I have ever seen,I have got to get some blue potatoes now for sure

I planted a square of 'All Blue'. They look very similar. I had them from my csa last year and liked them a lot. One of my sons is a chef, and I thought he'd like to play with these.

Mmmm purple mashed potatoes sound good. I can do that with the green eggs and ham!

Just beautiful !!!! Im so glad you planted before me so I could see how pretty they are. Im at the leaves through the dirt stage, and the leaves are even pretty

Everyone that has heard about my blue potatoes go ew. Except for other gardeners Im not sure if I want to share my "tatoes" with those nay sayers

Nice size potatoes too, a good harvest for sure.

Ha-v-v

Yep...just like Henny Penny....nobody wants to help with the work, but they're all there with their mouths gaping open when there's something to eat!

Those are cool! I heard about them on a video game once. I wish I could grow some.

Evan, YOU CAN!

My potatoes are growing in sacks -- you don't even need to have a yard to grow potatoes.

Plant Purple Potatoes!

LaFee,

Can you tell us more? In sacks? How does that work?

LaFee wrote:Yep...just like Henny Penny....nobody wants to help with the work, but they're all there with their mouths gaping open when there's something to eat!

LaFee:

One year my concord grapes went "over the moon" with fruit. I asked folks to come and pick to their hearts content and not one out of the 20 I asked would come out. Several said if I would pick them and bring the grapes to them they would "take them". I let the wild turkeys eat the grapes instead. At least they would pick their own.

God Bless, Ward and Mary.

Oh geez. Ward, I'd have been there with every bucket I could find. I haven't made Concord grape jelly since I was a wee girl, but I'd break my record! (One of my earliest memories is standing in my gramma's kitchen with a dish towel around my waist, stirring the juice (with help from one of her sisters!)

I bought contractor bags - I think they're also called rubble sacks or rubble bags -- they're a tough woven polyethylene sack used for hauling busted-up tile and bricks and things when you're doing demolition on a construction site. It's not a watertight weave, so they have good drainage and the air gets to the roots, too.

I filled them with mix, only about 6" in the bottom at first, and put my chits in that. Then, as they grow, you unroll the bag and keep adding soil.

Keeps the critters away, and makes it easy to harvest -- you just dump them out onto a tarp and pick up all the potatoes -- no digging, and no stabbed potatoes!

(Not an original idea, by the way -- the seed catalogs from England all carry potato bags of some sort or another...but for lots more money than I spent! I think I paid the equivalent of about $5 for 5 bags)

That is great information. We planted some "red" potatoes in a cheap Home Depot plastic tub. I was lucky to find any potato starts around here. I did see some purple potato starts at Lowe's a few months back but those are long gone. Also, they were pricey -- they only sold large bags of starts for $14. Since we have limited space for potatoes, I only wanted a few.

Does anyone have any purple or blue potato starts they don't need? I can make room for another tub of potatoes (or a bag) if I can find the starts. Or is it too late to plant them.

One more potato question.... I have been covering up my potato plants as soon as they get about 4" tall. Trouble is, some plants are growing faster then the others. I have a few plants that need covering now, but the others haven't broken through this layer yet. What should I do? Wait? Cut back? Cover anyway?

@ Ward: That just breaks my heart. I would have been there too! The farm I grew up on had a grape arbor with Concord grapes; I have no idea how old the grape vines were but they were HUGE and the taste is a fond childhood memory.


@ Shoda: Just a couple days ago at Lowes I saw they were selling off some upscale packages at half price. They were miniature bushel baskets with collections of onion, garlic and shallot sets, horseradish, etc. One of them had seed blue potatoes along with some other things. I came so close to buying them, but my potato box is FULL, and I've already got over 70 onions growing, so....! Maybe you can find one.

I didn't worry too much about how much I did or didn't cover my potatoes. One plant is not as big as the others but I think it is just a weak plant. The others (same variety) didn't care if they were completely covered, they pushed up anyway.

If I get a chance, I will check out Lowe's this weekend. I can swing half price! Thanks.