Sowing Spuds

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by Brook Elliott

Tap on a freshly dug potato and it feels crisp, like an apple right off the tree. Cook that spud up immediately and savor a subtle nuttiness in its tender flesh - almond-like in some varieties, walnutty in others, tantalizing flavors that are quick to fade. So says William Woys Weaver, food historian and heirloom vegetable expert who tended 54 varieties of heirloom potatoes in his Pennsylvania garden last summer.

"Growing potatoes at home really is lots of fun," Weaver says. His culinary students at Drexel University help out in his garden, and those who have not previously grown potatoes are totally amazed. "It's like digging for gold," he says.

And anyone can do it. Potatoes are high-yielding veggies that really are easy to grow and store, and contrary to conventional wisdom, they do not require a lot of land.

A pound of seed stock, which takes about 10 feet of planting space in a row, can produce 15 to 25 pounds of delicious tubers. (Weaver's book, Heirloom Vegetable Gardening, has an excellent chapter on growing potatoes. See MOTHER'S Bookshelf, Page 94.)

If you use organic growing methods, you'll have delicious tubers without the chemicals used on store-bought spuds, which are routinely treated with pesticides and antisprouting compounds, and which may have been in storage for so long they've lost much of their flavor.

Growing potatoes at home also opens up a whole new world of varieties not available in the supermarket. Nearly 4,000 different kinds can be found just in the Andes, birthplace of the potato, according to the industry's Global Potato News, but fewer than 70 varieties are listed in the Potato Association of America's inventory, and only six types are commonly grown in commercial fields.

For home gardeners, the current Seed Savers Exchange (SSE) yearbook lists nearly 600 varieties offered by its members, including Clara Klettke of Spud'tacular Potato Research in Kulm, North Dakota. She says in the past 12 years, she personally has grown 735 varieties, and this year alone, she grew 350. Several mail-order companies across the country offer dozens of hard-to-find choices as well (see Page 42).

Potatoes come in a diversity of colors: purple, blue, yellow, and red or pink, in addition to white. Among Weaver's favorites is All-Red,' also called 'Cranberry Red,' a big midseason heirloom potato available to Seed Savers members and sold by most of the mail-order sources listed.

Potatoes with color sometimes fade when cooked, according to Weaver, but 'All-Red' remains a rosy pink. It also is never bitter; some colored potato varieties have toxins in their skins that can impart a bitter taste, but that characteristic can be bred out of them over time, he says, through careful seed stock selection.

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