Consider the potato. Potatoes have been cultivated by humans for thousands of years. Genetic testing indicates that potatoes originated in the area of southern Peru and northeastern Bolivia. Most of the potato varieties that are currently popular around the world originated in Chile.
While potatoes are the fourth largest crop grown in America after corn, wheat and rice, they are the largest vegetable crop. China leads the world in potato production, with China and India producing about a third of all potatoes grown.
Americans have an extended love affair with potatoes. We eat them as fries, we eat them baked, we eat them as chips and we eat them in casseroles. We have potato bars with loaded potatoes. We cover them with cheese, sour cream, onions, bacon bits and chili. While we tend to blame potatoes for making us gain weight, they are also one of our go-to comfort foods when we need them.
Potatoes are not only easy to grow, they can also be a lot of fun. If you have young children or grandchildren, they will enjoy digging new potatoes. There's something about digging under a plant and exposing a big potato that captures a child's imagination. It just might be the one thing that inspires a life-long love of gardening.
When I was a young boy, my mother taught me how to look for cracks in the soil under the potato plants. She said the crack was caused by a potato growing under the soil. We would use an old butter knife (we called them case knives), to unearth the potatoes. It was always exciting for me as a young boy to dig potatoes. Then we would put a little grit and water in a bucket with the potatoes and bounce them around a little to remove the potato peel. Just rinse and you're done.
My mother would boil fresh garden potatoes in water and add a little corn starch and flour for thickening. She would serve them with corn bread, fresh cow peas and young scallions. I love young potatoes and fresh cow peas!
Or, sometimes Momma would slice them round like a potato chip, roll them in cornmeal and deep fry them to serve with pan fish and Mexican corn bread. We ate a lot of fish growing up and always had fried potatoes with them. For breakfast we sometimes would have hash browns with biscuits, eggs and bacon. Scrumptious. My mother was a firm believer in serving big breakfasts filled with what she called, "gut stuffing." Or, in other words, plenty of good things to eat that would stick to your ribs. We worked hard growing up, and Momma's breakfasts kept us going all morning.
I also enjoyed eating fried potato sandwiches. Just a little mustard on white bread and a bunch of sliced potatoes fried in bacon grease -- or served with fried salt pork. You just can't beat that sort of thing for flavor.
In the garden, potatoes are one of the easier vegetables to grow. I have my own way of planting potatoes. When I go to Sleepy Hollow store or Curran's for seed potatoes, I like to pick out smaller potatoes and plant them whole. When we were children growing up, our folks would cut the potatoes into chunks and put lime on the fresh cuts to help dry them out so they didn't rot in the ground. Later, as an adult, I began to experiment with planting small, whole potatoes and found that to be a superior way of growing them.
I used to work up the soil, place the potatoes on the surface and cover them with hay. That works well and the potatoes are much cleaner that way. But you have to keep adding hay, especially if a freeze is coming. Nowadays, I plant them about four inches deep. As the plants grow, I pull the soil up around the stalks and then use a little mulch to cover the soil. This keeps the soil from drying out too fast and protects any potatoes from getting direct sunlight.
Sunlight on a growing potato causes it to produce glycoalkaloids such as solanine, which can be toxic. Green spots on the potato can, but do not always, indicate the presence of solanine and need to be cut off before consuming the potato. Consumption of glycoalkaloids may cause headaches, diarrhea, cramps and, in rare cases, death. Poisoning from potatoes is not very common. Children are more sensitive to it than adults.
Potato varieties have blossoms with different colors. Some are white, while others are either pink, red, blue or purple. The plants with white blossoms will bear white potatoes while the other shades will generally produce a pinkish- to reddish-colored potato.
Different varieties of potatoes have different flavors and textures. McDonald's has played a major role in developing a potato that is consistent in both taste and texture. Most everyone likes McDonald's fries. We used to stop by A Q Chicken Express to buy barbecue chicken sandwiches and then go by McDonald's for some fries. This was an awesome combination. At one time McDonald's cooked their fries in beef fat, but the Center for Science in the Public Interest launched a campaign to make them stop; now they cook them in vegetable shortening. Unfortunately, the fries are cooked with trans fats which are much worse for you than beef fat. Such is life in America. Thanks for nothing, CSPI. Happy gardening!
Sam Byrnes is a Gentry area resident who has been gardening from his youth. He may be contacted by email at [email protected]. Opinions expressed are those of the author.
Editorial on 06/17/2015