Yesterday I harvested all the potatoes to make room for the peppers. Two of the potato varieties that I grew came to my attention in William Woys Weaver's book 100 Vegetables and Where They Came From. The purple potato is Negresse, aka Vitelotte Noir, Lila Susanne, Truffe de Chine, and more. I have doubts about this potato though, I'm not sure that it is actually Negresse, the plant is supposed to have dark black-brown stems and my plants didn't look like that. It is beautiful, even if it isn't true to type. The real proof will be in the eating, it is supposed to have a nutty truffle flavor, we'll see. This potato is actually a different species from other potatoes, Solanum ajanhuiri, a less domesticated cousin of the typical Solanum tuberosum varieties of potatoes. The flesh of this potato is dark purple to the core. This potato is quite rare and the only place I've found it is through a Seed Savers Exchange member.
The white potato is looking true to type, it's name is Lumper. This is the potato that caused the great famine in Ireland in the 1840's. Other than it's susceptibility to blight it is supposed to be a very versatile potato, it works well as a boiling potato, a baking potato, a grating potato and a roasting potato, and it's supposed to be very good tasting as well - no wonder everyone grew it back then.
The pink potato is Cherries Jubilee. I requested this one from a Seed Savers Exchange member because I liked the name. It produced the most potatoes by weight of the three varieties, you can see how much larger this variety can be. I used a couple small Cherries Jubilee potatoes last night on a pizza that also included fava beans, green garlic and chorizo. When I sliced the potatoes I found that the interior is marbled with the same pink color as the skin. I didn't taste the potato by itself, just on the pizza with all the other toppings, so I can't really comment on it's flavor or texture yet. My husband managed to scarf down all the extra pre-roasted slices that wouldn't fit on the pizza before I had a chance to taste them.
Next up is some baby Cimarron red romaine lettuce. I used this in a salad with the lemon-mustard-honey dressing that I mentioned in a previous post in addition to snipped chives, fresh tarragon, and toasted sliced almonds and . . .
wedges of one big fat roasted Burpee's Golden Beet on the side. At last, my first Burpee's Golden beet from the garden - it was delicious.
The fava beans are rolling in now, I picked 15 lb., 4 oz. of pods last Saturday, which came to 4 lb. 1oz. of shelled beans, and 2 pounds of peeled beans. I made a spread (puree, dip, whatever you want to call it) that my husband loves and we had it on Sardinian parchment bread with feta cheese crumbled on top. I was joking with my husband about the dish that it was quite the Mediterranean melange - a Moroccan spread on Italian bread with Greek Feta. The recipe for the spread is here.
Here's the harvest totals for the last two weeks:
Burpee's Golden Beets - 10.75 oz.
Piracicaba Broccoli (new plants) - 1.5 oz.
Golden Chard - 1 lb., 2.75 oz.
Fava Beans (Pods) - 20 lb., 1 oz.
Green Garlic - 8.75 oz. (what I weighed, there was more)
Cimarron Romaine Lettuce - about 8 oz. (I forgot to weigh it)
Mizuna - 1 lb., 1.5 oz.
Red "Scallions" - 1 lb., 9 oz.
Even' Star American Rapa - 2 lb., 11.5 oz.
Cherries Jubilee Potatoes - 4 lb., 2.75 oz.
Lumper Potatoes - 2 lb., 4.25 oz.
Negresse Potatoes - 1 lb., 14 oz.
Strawberries - 2 oz.
The total for the two weeks should be - 37 lb., 9 oz.
The total for the year is - 76 lb., 5.25 oz.
Egg count for the last two weeks was 16.
You can see what other garden bloggers have been harvesting lately if you go to Daphne's Dandelions, the home of Harvest Monday.
Those potatoes look spectacular. You could make quite a colorful spread just using what's on that plate.
ReplyDeleteDefinitely, a plentiful harvest. Specially those potatoes. They do look great. As you say, the proof will be in the eating, so I hope they taste even better than they look.
ReplyDeleteWow, that little purple potato sounds interesting!
ReplyDeleteThat is a very impressive harvest indeed! The potatoes are especially lovely, with such vibrant colors. I'll bet that pizza was tasty too!
ReplyDeleteVery colorful harvest! And so many different vegetables!
ReplyDeleteI also find that purple potato very interesting, both in color and taste.
Thanks for the detailed info about the potatoes. All seem like wonderful varieties. (Gotta love the purple !)
ReplyDeleteLovely harvest !
I love the purple potato, we grow Purple Majesty, Purple Peruvian, and All Blue...I might have to try and get that one for next season....the dark colored ones are my favorites.
ReplyDeleteWe just planted ours and you are already harvesting.:)
I love the look of these potatoes. It's so strange that you're harvesting yours and we're just planting ours. LOL...it's like we're living in different worlds. I'm hoping you'll post a pic of some of these beauties roasted up!
ReplyDeleteWow, big colorful harvest,love the blue potatoes. Your pizza and salad sound delicious and healthy.
ReplyDeleteBeautiful harvest. I can't wait to hear how the Negresse taste.
ReplyDeleteTwo years ago, I checked out Weaver's Heirloom Vegetable Gardening from the library and I read and reread it. It definitely shaped some of my growing choices and encouraged me even further to experiment with heirlooms (the more arcane, the more fascinating, of course).
Thank you also for your inspiring posts on peppers. I'm really excited about the varieties I'm growing this year, some more mundane than the others, but some far out (at least to me), and I can't wait to experience all their flavors and fragrances.
Beautiful potato pic! The purple potatoes definitely sound exciting. The red variety looks very similar to "Red Cloud" which is a variety I have grown with great success in prior years. Beautiful white crisp flesh with that blushing pink exterior.
ReplyDeleteWhat an amazing harvest! Your plants are way ahead of ours, with our broad (fava) beans flowering and developing tiny beans. Everything's a bit late here after some very cold spells early this year. Your Mediterranean melange meal sounds delicious - nothing wrong with mixing as it all goes together!
ReplyDeleteWow I adore the look of those purple potatoes. So dark and mysterious. They almost don't look edible with that color. Does the color cook out or does it stay true when cooked?
ReplyDeleteI think I'll say far away from those Lumpers if they are so susceptible to blight. After the northeast was hit so hard with it last year I'll stick to Kennebecs if I can get them. They are very resistant. I'm sure you don't have much blight issues out there.
Time to reply to all the lovely comments! The weatherman was right, it's raining, it's pouring . . . . and I got the pepper bed prepared yesterday. Now I get to figure out how I'm going to squeeze as many plants as possible in there.
ReplyDeleteTurling, they are a pretty trio, I wish I could say that I planned it that way. :)
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Angela, I am happy with the potato harvest, it was an experiment to see if I could grow them during the winter.
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Dan, It sounded interesting when I first read about it, now I'll get to taste . . .
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villager, the pizza was good, it was my husband's favorite of the three different ones I made that night.
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vrtlarica, I can't wait to taste them all, I hope they are all good.
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miss m, the purple is beautiful, but the picture doesn't do the pink one justice, it's the prettiest pink skinned potatoe I've ever seen, but maybe that's just because I grew it :>
Mr. H. - You are growing some interesting dark potatoes. It has taken me a year to get to potatoes of harvestable size, the tubers that I received through SSE were tiny things that I planted in pots last April. I got just enough tubers from that planting to then plant in the ground last fall. Those grew and survived the winter to produce my current crop. So, if you request some tubers through the SSE member that I got my starts from, expect a bit of a wait until you get to try eating them.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if I just got lucky with my winter grown potato experiment, I didn't give them much protection. I'll have to try again!
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Thomas, When Cynthia at Love Apple Farm said she grows potatoes year round I had to try it and she was right. Although she grows hers in pots and protects the plants more than I protected mine. I think it helped that I planted them in the least frosty corner of the garden. It would have been better if I could have waited a few weeks to harvest them - next year! I'm going to try steaming some of them first, that's supposed to preserve the color of the purple one.
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Mac, It is nice to see something other than green coming out of the garden :)
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Christina, I bought that book years ago and it has had a huge influence on my choices. I keep going back to it and his 100 Vegetables book. One of these days I'll have to figure out how many of the 100 I've grown. You should read his 100 Vegetables book as well, it features a lot of vegetables that aren't in his Heirloom book.
Oh my, I predict that you are going to become a chile fanatic . . .
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kitsapFG, there are so many interesting potatoes to try, sometimes I wish I had more room in my garden. But if I did then I would never have the time to leave it!
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chaiselongue, You did have some cold weather this winter - snow, something that my garden didn't have to suffer through. I tried some new fava varieties this year, early varieties which I planted early and it has made a difference, I typically haven't harvested favas until May.
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Daphne, blight hasn't been an issue in my part of the state, but it is out there in other areas.
The purple potato is supposed to keep its color when you steam it, so I think I'll try that first and make the potato salad that my husband has been asking for from moment he first eyed the potato harvest. :)
Fabulous pototo harvest. And to get 76 pounds of harvest already this year is wonderful. I should be so lucky. I'm not sure when (if ever) my blue potatoes will be ready to harvest. They've been in their pots two months now. I fished around in the soil to see if I could find a tuber, but got nothing. I'll wait a while longer. BTW, I loved your photos of Yosemite. We just got back from a trip to the Eastern Sierras, which will be my next post.
ReplyDeleteYour potatoes look amazing! I grew some last year, but they got some sort of blight, I believe. I planted them in late Jan. and noticed lots of black-spotted leaves in April or May. I harvested them in mid-June and only got 8.4 lbs from 8 plants. Any advice?
ReplyDeleteThose are beautiful spuds. You're so organized.
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