Best and Worst Potatoes of 2012

My husband Alex is half Swedish Finn, that odd little ethnic group that includes Linus Torvalds, inventor of the Linux operating system. Alex spent five years of his childhood in Stockholm, and one of the things he seriously misses about living in Sweden is new potatoes. Swedes take their potatoes very seriously, and new potatoes are a necessity for Midsummer festivities. For Swedes, they represent the beginning of summer as much as the first strawberries do for us.

Alex's memory of those potatoes is strong, and he's been searching for the same variety of potato ever since. Yukon Gold comes close, particularly in texture, but he says the flavor just isn't quite right. So last year, we set out to grow the perfect new potato for him. We chose four varieties to try out: Yukon Gold (as a standard), Bintje, Rose Finn, and Norkotah. Of these, we mounded the Yukon Golds and Bintjes and left the others planted flat in their beds.

It was a blighty, blighty year. I mentioned in my last post that many of our tomatoes suffered last year from late blight. What I didn't mention was that the potatoes came down with it first and unfortunately shared their fungus with neighboring plants. There's a neatly encapsulated gardening lesson: separate your nightshades!

By the end of July, it was clear that our potatoes weren't long for this world. Since the tomatoes hadn't yet shown any sign of late blight, with the exception of one hardy Stupice planted at the end of one potato bed, we chose to harvest our potatoes early in an effort to stem the spread of the disease.

On July 31st, the girls and I went out and dug up all the Yukon Golds. They loved this! It was like a dirty treasure hunt. Since midsummer, they'd been carefully brushing away soil from the mounds and making off with one or two small tubers for supper. Now, though, they could yank up entire plants and plunder the soil for potato bounty. Actually, I did most of the yanking with a pitchfork, while the girls sifted through the soil for stragglers. Here's what we harvested:

Eleanor (top) and Annelise dig up (Yukon) gold.

On August 5th, Alex came out and helped me with the rest of the potato harvest.

Rose Finn and Bintje potatoes.

Norkotah potatoes.

Here's how well these varieties performed for us:

Bintje

This Dutch variety is grown widely throughout Scandinavia, and we were very pleased to find organic seed potatoes available in the U.S. from Irish Eyes Garden Seeds in Washington. The Bintjes produced quite well in their hills with a little scabbing and wire worm damage. Alex declares that Bintjes come very, very close to what he remembers of Swedish-grown new potatoes. The one downside was that they simply weren't ready by June 21st for use as new potatoes. We ended up using Yukon Golds for our Midsummer dinner. They also were seriously affected by the late blight. They kept reasonably well and just started sprouting in the basement last week. We liked these enough that we will likely plant them again next year.

Norkotah

I selected Norkotah not as a Swedish new potato contender but rather as a reliable storage potato. This relatively new russet variety was introduced in 1987 and has become a favorite russet variety at markets. I can understand why. Despite the fact that we didn't hill them and they're late season potatoes, they produced like crazy. I think if we'd hilled them and allowed them a full season, we'd have filled that large basket, and then some. They resisted the late blight best and had the least scabbing of all the varieties, and they have kept quite well in our basement. We used the last few for Thanksgiving mashed potatoes along with some Bintjes and Yukes. We'll definitely plant these again.

Rose Finn

I wanted to try a fingerling potato in the hopes that it would mature early enough for midsummer, but Rose Finn was a thorough disappointment. They were slowest to sprout and mature, resisted the late blight poorly, had the lowest yield, and were scabby, knobby, and mealy. After trying one batch, I gave the rest away to a delighted Polish friend, which just goes to show that tastes vary widely. Not planting these again, I'm afraid.

Yukon Gold

This common thin-skinned potato has creamy golden flesh and is wonderful boiled or mashed. Yukon Gold performed well for us, maturing early enough for Midsummer and producing a sizeable harvest despite the blight. Yukons don't store well, so we used these up as quickly as possible. While this variety is a reliable one and easy to grow, I don't think we'll grow them again this year simply because they're everywhere, readily available in every farmers' market and grocery store. I'd rather plant less common varieties I can't easily get.

So, in 2013, we'll repeat the Bintjes and Norkotahs. I think I'll also try the Swedish Peanut fingerling, known in Sweden as Mandelpotatis or "almond potatoes." If I have room for one more variety, I'd like to try a red-skinned potato. Selecting for disease resistance, I think I'd try Dark Red Norland or Chieftain. If you have suggestions of your own, please let me know.

This year, I'd really like to try growing potatoes in box towers. Irish Eyes has some excellent instructions for how to do this. If we can find the time to construct these, we can easily fit four varieties in our garden.

Note: Irish Eyes offers mini tubers as seed potatoes for some varieties. I highly recommend these. Cutting seed potatoes leaves them vulnerable to disease. Whole tubers resist far better and sprout faster.

Alex relaxes with his potato harvest.