A few years ago we quit growing potatoes at Tourne-Sol farm.
Though there is nothing like freshly dug potatoes, we didn’t have reliable yields. We could get anywhere from 1lb a bedfoot to 4lbs a bedfoot.
- At 4lbs/bedfoot, potatoes definitely made sense for our farm. It was a lot of lifting but what bounty!
- At 1lb/bedfoot, the harvest didn’t make up for all the work to get the plants to maturity. We could be growing something else in that same spot to feed our customers.
It’s always a tough decision to drop a crop you love no matter how much stress it causes you.
What made it easier was that we know a few farms who always had potato surpluses to sell. That way we could get some potatoes for our customers.
What made it harder was that these other farms didn’t tend to have all the specialty varieties we used to grow and loved to eat.
This year, we opened a new home garden and planted 60ft of potatoes for ourselves – some Russian Blue and Amarosa and French Fingerling and a few others.
When your previous experience was growing half an acre of potatoes, 60ft is a breeze!
Here’s a picture of some of the harvest. We got about 10 colanders like this from the garden.
I didn’t weigh them, just bagged them up.
