Potatoes

Over the weekend, Bill and the kids and I went to Gillette's Home & Garden Agway, in Exeter, RI to get some stuff for the gardens.  (We used to just call it “Agway,” but I think in recent years it was bought by the Gillette people.)

Among other things, we got seed potatoes. 

Four kinds!

Left to right, in case my scribbles on the bags in the picture above aren’t legible, I’ve got Katahdin, All Blue, Superior, and Red Pontiac.

Katahdin is a low-starch variety, good for soups, salads and boiling. 

All-Blue – late-season, blue-fleshed potato good for mashing.  (Can’t wait to try this one!)

Superior – Good general-purpose potato

Red Pontiac are mid-season, red-skinned potatoes.

All of them (if I remember correctly) store well, too.

Anyway, we’d like to get these in the ground some time soon, so I started prepping them the other day.

First, I got a couple of egg cartons and divided them into sections – and labeled them.

Then I cut each potato into two or three pieces, including at least one eye in each piece, and put them in the egg cartons.

And that’s pretty much it, for now.

The cut sides will dry out and harden off, protecting the potato flesh from bugs and germs.  Over the next couple of day, the eyes will (or should) sprout, feeding off the nutrients in the remaining potato flesh until I get them in the ground and they can send out roots to grab sustenance from the soil.

As they grow, we’ll hill up the soil around them, and eventually, (fingers crossed), we’ll have four different kinds of potato – all grown in our own little yard!

Yay!