Apothecary Inn

July 1st Potato Harvest

I really wanted to make some potato gratin tonight, so I went rooting around (har de har har) in some of my potato beds to see what I could come up with. The results were happy (and surprising!):

I managed to grab tubers off of the Adirondack Blue, Purple Cowhorn (aka "Bear Poop"), Yukon Gold, and Russian Banana Fingerling plants. I tried to be gentle about not hurting the roots while I went digging for tubers, but I am a bit worried that I might have accidentally killed a few of them. Sigh. We shall see. Most of my potato plants are late season varieties (120 days+), so I plan to refrain from harvesting any tubers until the frost kills the tops of the plants.

In other news, my Ajawiri plants are flowering!! I hope they go to seed! What an absolutely fantastic planting experiment that would be!!

Here are photos of the two individual varieties, along with my gardening notes, that I plan to grow again next year. The Purple Cowhorn is a very rare heirloom potato variety.

Adirondack Blue

Purple skin, dark purple flesh. Planted in April. A hard frost completely killed off the plant tops at least once. 90+ days later, bringing in the first of harvest. Multiple medium-sized tubers per plant - better than I expected this early. This is a late season potato variety. I would definitely plant this again. The flavor is very wonderful, and I would say it's a mid-range producer.









Purple Cowhorn (aka "Bear Poop")

Larger tubers seem to have brown skin, while smaller ones have purple skin. This harvest was off of a single plant, and there were actually many more tubers on the plant, but I was worried about damaging the roots too much by spending any more time rooting around. VERY prolific producer. This potato was planted in May. The tops of the plant are already beginning to turn yellow and die back a bit.