Spuds

Everyone knows that in Florida you plant potatoes in January.  Or rather, everyone in Florida knows you plant potatoes in January.  The commercial seed companies, which tend to be located in non-Florida places like Indiana and Pennsylvania, do not seem to know this, and they won't ship a seed potato order to Zone 9 before mid-February.  Happily, our local Feed & Seed stores have their own suppliers.  Call around Martin Luther King Day and the spuds will either be in stock or on their way.

Prepared potato garden, with chickens.

Every farm should have a garden, and Itchy Dog Farm is no exception.  Shortly after moving here we tilled and fenced a sizable rectangle in back of the house, but after one season of raising collards and squash it was clear that I don't have enough time to garden and that Craig doesn't like collards or squash.  Thereafter the fenced garden became a no-mow weed protection zone.  However, I do keep a smaller raised bed in service as a potato garden.

The best varieties for planting here are Sebago, La Chipper, Red La Soda and La Rouge.  (The "La" varieties were developed by an experimental breeding program in Lousiana.)  Sebagos are the best all purpose whites, good for boiling, mashing, roasting, frying and steaming.  This year I will plant Sebago and Red La Soda to have both white and red.  Sweet potatoes also do well but I haven't tried growing them yet.

Potatoes originated in the mountains of southern Peru some 10,000 years ago.  The Incas not only ate them for dinner but applied them as medicine, paid them for taxes, and used them as clocks, measuring time by how long their potatoes took to cook.  The Spanish, after decimating the Incas, introduced potatoes to Europe in the 1500s.  Potatoes were introduced to North America in 1621 when the governor of Bermuda sent a chestful to the governor of colonial Virginia.  In 1802 Thomas Jefferson boosted the popularity of the potato and invented the first French fry when he had the White House chef make potatoes "served in the French manner" at a dinner party.

One reason potatoes caught on as they did is they are relatively easy to grow and more nutritionally complete than other staples.  People can live on potatoes alone for quite a long time, although not forever, as they lack vitamins D and E.  The pre-famine 19th century Irish poor lived primarily on potatoes but also had buttermilk, cabbage, turnips and oatmeal.  They did, however, eat a whopping lot of potatoes -- according to Wikipedia, as many as 60 a day.  When the potato crops failed in the 1840s, a million people died because of the British government's failure to provide relief or allow Irish tenant farmers to eat the meat, dairy and grain they exported.

After the Irish Potato Famine, Americans who were previously quite enamored of the potato relegated it to animal feed for a few decades.  Although the United States Potato Board (yes, Virginia, there is a United States Potato Board) implies the cause was an aversion to potato blight, one can't help but wonder if it wasn't an aversion to the half million Irish peasants who immigrated to eastern U.S. cities.  That would be a great irony since it is believed the fungus that caused the potato blight came to Ireland on ships from eastern U.S. cities.

Potato seed balls

In another great irony, the nutritious potato is also poisonous.  The leaves and stem of the potato plant contain a glycoalkaloid poison called solanine, a nerve toxin that disrupts communication between cells.  A greenish tint to the potato skin indicates presence of solanine in the tuber as well.   Pollinated potato flowers will develop into fruits that look like green tomatoes and contain hundreds of potato seeds.  These seed balls also contain tons of solanine and should not be eaten by man nor beast.  Potato breeders use potato seeds from cross-bred plants to develop new varieties, but farmers and gardeners use seed potato tubers for growing potato crops.

Potatoes grow well in North Florida.  The town of Hastings, about an hour east of here between Palatka and St. Augustine, is the Potato Capital of Florida.  This may be a distinction, but not a very remunerative one, and the residents just manage to scrape by.  The joke is that a Hastings potato farmer wins the state lottery and is asked what he'll do with all that money.  He says, well I guess I'll just keep farming 'til the money runs out.  According to the 2010 census, there were 580 people in Hastings, up 37 bodies from 2000, equally distributed between white and black.   The populace is overwhelmingly Democratic and has a good sense of humor -- a local bumper sticker reads "Stuffing is for turkeys -- eat potatoes".

Our own potato garden is ready for Martin Luther King Day.   Earlier last month I turned the soil and dug in leaf mulch and my own special brand of compost.  When the seed potatoes come in I will cut them into pieces and let them cure for a day or two, then plant them in 4" trenches.  As the plants grow I will hoe them to hill them, and wait for them to bloom.  Then we'll dig up the sweetest little new potatoes you ever saw and eat them with April spinach and tomatoes.