- Seed Potatoes
You can plant potatoes any time after Presidents’ Day, or so goes the conventional wisdom on the peninsula. So Farmer Nyel was a little later than he might have been yesterday. But, hey! Whenever they’re ready for harvest, we’ll be ready to eat them!
In addition to Red Pontiacs which we just call “new potatoes” and are a standard in our garden and on our table, Nyel planted Princess La Ratte Fingerlings and German Butterballs. We’ve not tried either of those varieties before, but Ray Millner was very convincing last summer on the Edible Garden Tour. He talked about the many potato varieties that are more protein than starch – those with thin, waxy skins are usually in that category. Both the Princess La Ratte Fingerling and the German Butterball qualify as protein rich.
The Princess La Ratte Fingerling is an heirloom French variety (Ratte means mouse) and the plants are supposed to be amazingly productive. Good! You can’t have too many potatoes! They are said to have a texture and flavor reminiscent of chestnuts and have been made famous by Las Vegas Chef Joel Robuchon who uses then for his pommes purée – quintessential mashed potatoes involving two pounds of the fingerlings and two cubes of butter! (How could you go wrong?)
German Butterballs (no relation to the turkey) are also an heirloom variety and are sometimes called the “butterless potato” because they are so good, you don’t need butter. (The jury is out on that one, at least for me. In 100 to 120 days, I’ll see for myself.) They are an all-purpose potato – good in soups as well as for roasting, frying, and mashing. As an added bonus, they take well to long-term storage.
And speaking of potatoes – one of my all-time favorite folksongs is “Pity the Poor Patat” recorded in 1944 by Josef Marais on “Songs of the South African Veld”:
The tree he has a bark,
A bark that’s thick or thin.
Pity the poor patat,
He’s only got a skin.
The tree he has his trunk,
He stares up in the sky.
Pity the poor patat,
He can’t see with his eyes.
The tree he has his leaves,
They’re waving all around.
Pity the poor patat,
For he lives in the ground.
Although the tree is proud,
He only gives us wood.
But from the poor patat,
We get our daily food.
I did not know about protein-rich potatoes. Thank you for the tips that will lead us to re-think what we plant. It is still cold in our NW corner of the state with a temp of 28 this morning!