In 1898, during the Gold Rush, people in the Yukon and Alaska used to trade Gold for potatoes. It wasn’t that gold was worthless. It was because potatoes were that valuable.
I get it.
We are working through the last few hundred pounds of homegrown potatoes here now and I am rationing them out like Debbie Ryer’s dark fruitcake at Christmas (if you know you know).
It’s not just the amazing taste of homegrown potatoes. And not just the fact we worked so hard to bring in this amazing crop of potatoes -Norland and Yukon Gold varieties mostly- although I round out the harvest with fingerlings and a few other varieties. The Irish potato famine lessons endure.
It’s the nourishment.
Can you taste nutrition?
Thomas Pawlick did some studies and found the Canadian potato has lost 57% of its’ Vitamin C since 1960. The reason? Synthetic fertilizers. They only supply NPK-Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Potassium to the plants. Scientist have identified plants need at least seventeen different nutrients to feed on. Calcium, carbon, zinc, iron-these are all found in soil. Once we harvest our vegetables, we need compost and organic matter to return these valuable nutrients to the soil.
Without it, the vegetables “mine” the nutrients from the soil instead, depleting it. Vegetables still grow with doses of NPK but the other nutrients are gone (I call this dirt, not soil) and cannot be taken up by the plants. And doing this on repeat, leads to potatoes that aren’t worth much more, let alone gold. I hear it constantly, potatoes seem to have no taste anymore.
Adding compost in the spring after the ground has warmed up will set us up for success in the potato patch. I have already once again ordered my seed potatoes from Lavender Hill Nursery.
I am thinking of that moment in about two months time, when I will drop the first earlies in the ground.
However I am dreaming of this moment-when in early July I will lift the first beautiful new potatoes out of the rich, dark soil to cook for my family with some minced garlic, fresh chives and butter.
At that moment, yes indeed-they are worth their weight in gold.
