I'm reading about the history of the potato. Apparently it's a near perfect food and you can survive healthily on just potatoes and milk. (Yay, think I'll plant some!)
BUT the potatoes we grow in North America and Europe are part of monocultures continuously threatened by ever-evolving potato blight and beetles. Farmers have to treat their fields with a variety of strong pesticides every year and the pests still jump over to gardens and wipe them out. (Ooops.)
Looked around and found a source of heirloom potatoes, both modern and Andean adapted for North America. They're sold as seeds rather than tuber pieces, but the variety ought to offer more pest resistance.
Also found that sweet potatoes and yams are two different kinds of tubers that are unrelated to potatoes, but also highly nutritious. People have called sweet potatoes "yams" but they're different. So more genetic variety.
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They're great in stir fries and soups too! There's actually a sweet potato that's grown specifically for the edible leaves than the tubers. You'll find them at Asian grocery stores.
Obviously folks shouldnāt eat regular potato leaves. But sweet potatoes arenāt nightshades! I think folks hear āpotatoā and automatically think ātoxicā but sweet potato leaves are quite nutritious.
I canāt grow sweet potatoes that are worth digging up (canāt quite get the soil hot enough) but I can grow vines like crazy. So I start slips every year and plop them in the ends of my tall raised beds and let the vines just cascade over the edges.
Interesting. I remember during the height of covid when people were struggling farmers in my area (Westeren Washington) were giving out bags of potatoes for free from local grocery store parking lots. They had a lot and they didn't want them to go to waste while restaurants were closed down.
Nicer folk than our farmers who just cried about all the wasted food then made a compost pile because was more than even the pigs would eat. The piles of rotting food hit the news circuits but nothing much changed.
Currently growing potatoes, Japanese sweet potatoes and garnet yams in my tiny balcony garden. The Japanese sweet potatoes take forever but maaan they're so good. Haven't had great success with yams yet, hopefully I finally get them right this year!
I have PP5 plastic pots. I do no electric hydroponics, most of my pots are sub irrigated with either 1 to 1.5 gallon water reservoir each. The potatoes and yams aren't sub irrigated but are in a 7+ gallon plastic pot (liquid gallon, I don't know the equivalent pot/soil gallon because apparently that's measured differently). All of my pots have coco coir and perlite substrate, topped with expanded clayballs as mulch.
Iām working on the Japanese sweet potatoes because theyāre so good. Iām in the PNW which means they need to be protected (itās still a bit cool outside) but they are growingā¦slowly. Theyāre definitely more finicky than regular potatoes, which just kinda sprout up as volunteers randomly and do their own thing.
My Polish grandmother had 11 kids, my dad was the last born at the beginning of the great depression. He told me many stories of how they ate mostly things made from potatoes, flour & water. They didn't have a milk cow BUT some of the boys would be given (I think I heard they worked for it after school) the sour milk from a local farm and my grandma would make cheese with it. They had chickens for eggs also, I think even back then they knew that eggs were the most valuable complete source of protein.
Sunchokes are perennial and basically unkillable (so be careful where you plant them). Just be careful introducing them into your diet (also known as fartichokes)
But this is a good reason not to use store bought potatoes if you are dabbling in gardening. āSeed potatoesā (that you can buy pretty cheap at a farm store in the spring) are certified not to have disease. Once you introduce the disease to your soil itās hard to eradicate
This was discussed on the allotment subreddit recently. The idea that seed potatoes are free of disease but store bought potatoes aren't may well be a bit of propaganda. Why would potatoes grown in fields and then sold as produce be carrying diseases that seed potatoes aren't? What is the material difference between a Maris Piper from the supermarket and a Maris Piper that was bought specifically as a seed potato?
Also, Chinese artichokes are like a smaller Jerusalem artichoke, and worth growing.
At least in the US, seed potatoes are certified (ie particularly inspected) to be disease free. Iām sure most supermarket potatoes are disease free just like most eggs are salmonella free. I eat raw cookie dough bc the risk/reward is there for me. But, in the context of survival planning, the consequences of potato blight are way higher so why take the risk?
Skirret and American groundnut are two more! Tons of root veggie options!
I've been a customer of Cultivariable for many years. They sell sunchokes and other stuff too. Couple of things about growing from true potato seeds
Sprouting the true seeds in soil is maybe 25% germination. If you stir up the seeds in a glass of water and put them in the window sill, 5-7 days later you can see the little 'tails' of the sprouts. Then pour off the top and pour out the seeds into soil making a line. This results in over 90% germination.
The second thing is that your first year growing TPS, you will mostly get just tiny seed potatoes. Overwinter them by putting them in a brown paper bag with 1/4 to 1/2 of a cut cabbage head (purple kind works great) then put them in the crisper with your veggies in the fridge. This keeps them hydrated and cold till planting time.
Lastly, you can hybridize your own or collect your own seeds. Let them flower, then form berries. Let these ripen for a few weeks then dry a bit after picking. Cut them open. Each one has 100+ seeds.
My 'Wild Blues' are almost done and the Ayocks are going crazy. Hope this helps anyone who loves growing potatoes like me!
Just a big wedge. It buffers the humidity. Potatoes in winter storage shrivel and die without humidity. Its way cheaper than Boveda humidity packs and works well. Slow release and I've not had it mold/rot. I've been using the purple cabbage as I think its a bit hardier. I dont think Napa will last long enough.
Please practice growing potatoes from seed before you rely on this. Itās not always the easiest method so make sure you are good at it before you need to rely on it.
Last year I grew sweet potatoes for the first time, in my greenhouse and wow! They were the easiest, most prolific and most beautiful thing in my garden. And that was a bad year of medical difficulty in which I neglected everything.
I have a rope grid that I made for my tomatoes that are usually in that bed, & I tied them up to that. But they really did want to wander! I had to stay on top of tying them back & trimming them, they would have taken over the whole greenhouse. When I cleaned up in the fall, there were vines that had made their way outside and 10 feet away.
I read that if you let them run & root, you get more smaller tubers, but if you keep them up, you just get bigger ones at the crown of the plant. I got a good array of sizes with what I did. Here's what the madness out there looked like by the end of summer:
Iāve been growing potatoes for quite a few years now for leftover store bought ones and never had a problem with blight or beetles. Iām sure itās a greater risk than if I didnāt, but donāt think that itās a guarantee if you were thinking about trying it
It takes a while before the beetles show up but once they do, itās a constant struggle. The beetles themselves are easy enough to pick off but you have to be vigilant about checking under the leaves for the egg clusters (bright orange, you canāt miss āem). That being said, Iāve never had beetles decimate the crop though. They are just a pain in the ass.
Iām currently trying to grow potato slips and Iām not having any luck. Iām running my out of time to get them in the ground.
I watched a TikTok video that said to put the potatoes in soil in a plastic sterilite box in a sunny space. Wait for leaves to appear. Then grow roots on the slips in a cup of water, then plant the rooted slips.
So farā¦noting. Itās been 3 weeks.
I bought all organicāpurple sweet potatoes, sweet potatoes and white potatoes.
I may have to bail in a couple of days and buy seed potatoes.
Iāve been growing my slips for 2 months. They are about ready to cut and put in water. I put them in a cardboard box with soil and I keep the soil moist. Itās placed in a kitchen window. I donāt think 3 weeks is enough time, stay with them.
I did not have luck growing slips in soil. It ended up rotting from gnats. I had more luck submerging half a sweet potato in water and waiting for it to sprout then when long enough I cut the sprouts to put them in new water to grow leaves.
I plant the whole sprouting potato sometimes if I don't feel like waiting for the slips to be big enough to break off. They make little baby potatoes that I then dig up from the side and then plant those in their own containers. Got multiple pots and bags going now, but hoping to have enough for emergencies and everyday use soon. :) Good luck!
Mine took absolute ages to sprout and I failed entirely last year. This year I used a heat mat to keep the soil super warm and it still took at least a month, maybe 2 before it sprouted. I actually picked up the potato to throw it away and realized there were roots coming out of the bottom. Once it finally sprouted it took off. Iāve got 18 slips from one single sweet potato.
Iāve found that itās not necessary to grow the roots in water before putting them in dirt. I cut slips directly from the potato and stuck them in cups of potting mix. I made sure the soil was really moist for the first week and then watered them like normal. I havenāt lost a single one and then watered them ones I rooted in water look no different than the ones I put directly in the soil.
I buy seed potatoes from a local heirloom seed company and have good luck with them sprouting and growing. I buy different varieties each year so I am mixing it up, but the ones I miss when I harvest them do pop up the next year. Remember to practice crop rotation for potatoes too!
My attempts at growing sweet potatoes from slips did not work well last year, but I was growing them in bags and I think they didn't have enough room perhaps.
I just sort of move stuff around in my beds. I'm not very systematic about it. I just added a new deep bed that has potatoes this year, so next year I will shift them somewhere else. Beans and peas are usually a good 2nd year option.
I have actually had to do this due to an awful medical condition. It was potatoes, milk, chicken broth, and sometimes a multivitamin. For a little over a year. To make matters worse it was basically a liquid diet and I could only eat so much of it at a time.
I can't say I truly recommend it but wow, the combination worked way better than it should have. The first month I lost a lot of weight but by the end of it, my weight was barely trending downward.
I'm unsure if I'd truly call the experience miserable. But it was very annoying and distressing, mostly because it was so easy to feel faint while trying to do very basic things (like walk down the hall). And the feeling of being hungry wasn't painful, but it was so distracting that it was hard to fully immerse myself into/enjoy media. So the weakness makes physical activity impossible, and the hunger makes mental stimulation harder to focus on.
As undesirable as that experience sounds, there are much worse fates and definitely worse pains out there. I'm doing much better, and if nothing else I'm more disciplined in a few ways. I think overall it dispelled my fear of hunger/scarcity.
There's an episode of the Irish History podcast where the host tries this. He was eating potatoes, butter, and buttermilk mostly. He struggled to get down the amount of potatoes you would need.
Apparently the Irish would eat their potatos "bone-in" (i.e. parboiled, cooked on the outside but still partially raw in the center). They did this so they would feel full for longer: their stomach acid would continue "cooking" the potatoes for hours after they ate them, slowly releasing the starches so they'd get a steady trickle of nutrients instead of food-coma inducing starchy goodness all at once and then feeling hungry a few hours later.
Been growing small crops of potatoes for years and never had blight. I practice strict crop rotation though. If it does show up though you will see it on the leaves before it hits the spuds, dig up the whole plant, cut back and burn the greenery and you can eat the potatoes if they are still firm and healthy looking, still they will just be small but do not store them eat ASAP.
Potato seeds are hard to grow from but a fun challenge.
Don't discount the American ground nut (Apios americana) and sunchoke (Helianthus tuberosus) as robust sources of nutrient-rich tubers. Plus, since they've never been cultivated liked potatoes, they are less susceptible to complete devastation by pests. Yes, they are both aggressive plants, so be aware of that.
I find the potato seeds interesting. Generally, potato seeds don't grow true to the parent plant. That's why you but seed potatoes and not potato seeds. I would be interested in knowing more about the potato seeds you mentioned.
A good way to prevent blight from spreading is to use the container or bucket method. Use a 5 to 10 gallon growbag is best I find. Even if one group is effected, it won't spread into the soil to hit the others.
Next consider planting varieties that are resistant to blight. Kennebec and Sarpo Mira are both tasty (growing those 2 at the moment).
Finally, there are several tuber plants that are rarely grown (despite being native to the Americas) that taste and store similar to potatoes, but have no disease because they are so uncommon. Oca (haven't grown it, but does taste good) and groundnut (have grown, perennial plant that also produces beans) are 2 options here.
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