It's what the French call them. Potatoes. Earth Apples. Pommes de Terre.
When it comes time for harvest, you place the potato fork between the mounded row of plants. With a downward motion the fork is gently drawn back towards the body, spilling potatoes out of the ground, like fruit from a basket. The rosy purple skins of this potato, Caribe, make the French name seem even more reasonable.
Potatoes come in many different colors, both inside and out. There are red, yellow and purple fleshed potatoes. Skins run the gamut from black to white. Shapes vary also. Remember an earlier posting, how I spoke of my potato with three names? I served these fingerlings (Rose Finn Apple) at the BOMB party, roasted with only olive oil and salt and pepper. The crowd went wild! Its hard to think of potatoes as a delicacy, but when fresh from the ground... especially with fingerlings, potatoes are taken to a new level.
This was the first time I have ever grown potatoes. The first time for onions too, and garlic. All of which surprised me with their ease and their forgiving nature. They really produced without getting much attention. I am determined to do better with all of them next year, to give each more space and more affection.
I hung more than 20lbs of garlic beneath my porch at the end of July to cure, but that is another story, with its own regrets, successes and failures.
So far, I have harvested 30 lbs. of Caribe, with half a row left in the ground. My estimates for the fingerlings are not so clear. Their yield seems to be somewhat proportionate, in that for every piece I planted, I seemed to harvest about four potatoes. For Caribe that will work out to about a tenfold increase from the four pounds I planted. Each fingerling is so much smaller though, that I find it hard to believe 40 lbs will come from the two rows of Rose Finn I planted. I will get a better sense at my next harvest. So far I have dug only part of a row and not weighed any of it. I planted my Keuka Gold potatoes later, and I didn't cut up the seed as much. I wonder how their yield will compare? I won't know for awhile, they were planted in early June, several weeks after the others and are still green and lush.
