As this summer goes on, the days seem to be getting more and more perfect. Take today: a comfortable 23 degrees with a light breeze. Perfect for laying about in the sun doing nothing, just like this year's potato harvest. That's it there just minutes after I pulled the potatoes from the soil. It's a modest harvest to be sure, but certainly enough to enjoy several potato salads, my favourite way to eat potatoes. I planted them out of nostalgia (about a decade ago, potatoes were the first vegetable I ever tried to grow.)
I might not plant them again next year, though. They take up a lot of space and take a really long time to reach a decent size. Potatoes are fun and their blooms are quite pretty. They are also so easy to find in any grocery store and dirt cheap. That makes me think it might be wiser to use the potato plot for something a little more exotic next year. Maybe some swiss chard and beets (okay, hardly exotic but to an amateur vegetable gardener, they're pretty cool.) They have the added appeal of being pick-as-needed crops. You pick what you need when you need it and the rest of the plants just keep growing. I really appreciate that about this year's carrots. I'm plucking one or two daily for dinner and the rest keep growing, and growing and growing. My vegetable area is so small I doubt I'll ever really need to consider long-term storage solutions for my harvest, so pick-as-needed seems the way to go. My poor potatoes. I haven't even had a taste yet and already I have rejected them. Let's face it though, as good as it might be, there's only so much potato salad a girl can eat.
As this summer goes on, the days seem to be getting more and more perfect. Take today: a comfortable 23 degrees with a light breeze. Perfect for laying about in the sun doing nothing, just like this year's potato harvest. That's it there just minutes after I pulled the potatoes from the soil. It's a modest harvest to be sure, but certainly enough to enjoy several potato salads, my favourite way to eat potatoes. I planted them out of nostalgia (about a decade ago, potatoes were the first vegetable I ever tried to grow.) 
I might not plant them again next year, though. They take up a lot of space and take a really long time to reach a decent size. Potatoes are fun and their blooms are quite pretty. They are also so easy to find in any grocery store and dirt cheap. That makes me think it might be wiser to use the potato plot for something a little more exotic next year. Maybe some swiss chard and beets (okay, hardly exotic but to an amateur vegetable gardener, they're pretty cool.) They have the added appeal of being pick-as-needed crops. You pick what you need when you need it and the rest of the plants just keep growing. I really appreciate that about this year's carrots. I'm plucking one or two daily for dinner and the rest keep growing, and growing and growing. My vegetable area is so small I doubt I'll ever really need to consider long-term storage solutions for my harvest, so pick-as-needed seems the way to go. My poor potatoes. I haven't even had a taste yet and already I have rejected them. Let's face it though, as good as it might be, there's only so much potato salad a girl can eat.
2 comments:
Nice looking spuds. :-) I came to the same conclusion... because of my garden space issues and how cheaply they can be bought.
Oh, but your potatoes look sooo nice. Like tomatoes, after eating fresh dug potatoes no way I can have that old supermarket stuff again.
I like to parboil, cube and then roast them in the oven with loads of garlic, rosemary and drizzles of olive oil. Yum!
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