Allow us to read you into a three year garden saga! Two seasons ago, we experienced a catastrophic failure of our potato crop. We performed autopsies on the losses, expecting blight. As best we could tell, though, the evidence led us down an entirely unexpected path.
Ultimately, we concluded that we experienced industrial contamination, caused by the painting of a brand new, nearby apartment complex next to our city-based community garden. We weren’t the only ones. We were eventually able to practically map out the path of volatile compounds coming to rest across our community garden. And, for whatever reason, it was primarily selective against nightshades.
It was a rare, freak incident. Our garden was just in the path of the wind that day. And, unfortunately, we probably ate more than a few petrochemicals that winter.
Out of an abundance of caution, though, we decided to entirely replace our potato seed stock the next season. It seemed like a fun opportunity to choose some different varieties, so we rolled with it. We were mostly happy with our choices. But, our white potato crop really suffered last season and we needed to bolster it.
So, this bring us to today’s topic. We’re integrating new genetics into our existing seed potato crop, which will become this season’s harvest and next season’s seed potato!
There’s no particular science to this. When you want to improve the genetics in a potato bed, you just plant new genetics. What you plant is what you get. A tomato is a tomahto, a potato is a potahto as they say. We’ve been regularly growing different varieties of potatoes next to one another for ages.
Given last season’s lackluster performance, I think we’ll favor our new choices in our sowing. We picked up a baked potato style and a German lineage fingerling variety, both of which looked quite attractive to us. As usual, our choices are Alaska Certified seed potato stock, important in geographically isolated regions.
We might cut these up and allow them to scab over. Then again, we might just plant them whole. The decision lies in just how many seed potatoes we actually need. Which is not much when we’re simply integrating new genetics.
Oh, and potatoes are like one of our surprise favorite crops. So, we’ll have plenty more to say on them, definitely! See less
