Potatoes From Your Own Plot
Are A Taste Delight

The potato is so often regarded as a humble vegetable

and yet for many people it is a staple of their daily menu. Humble it should never be. Most gardeners or beginning gardeners understand that a Tomato grown in your own space, tastes far superior to almost anything that you can buy. Well the same can be said for the Potato. Fresh from the garden in mid-summer - boiled with a drizzle of butter - Aahhh!

Why Grow My Own?
Again, one of the main reasons for growing your own is choice. Yes, there are many different varieties of potato available but just not as readily. Most of the larger seed catalogues have a few varieties of potatoes available and some of the garden centres will offer a few choices. Renee’s Seeds even list a potato that you can grow from seed and I have tried it and it works but the yields were not great. It was fun to try and I’m sure I could do better next time. There are a few specialty seed potato growers that cater to the retail market. I’m currently happy with the good selection at Eagle Creek Seed Potatoes. They didn’t have my favourite Purple Viking this year, 2008, but that really just forced me to try other varieties.


What’s A Seed Potato Anyway?
In the simplest of terms, potatoes are grown each year by planting an actual chunk of a potato. It will sprout and grow into a fairly large plant and attached to its roots you can dig up a harvest of several new potatoes. Theoretically you could go to your grocery store, buy a few potatoes, plant them and grow some new ones. Why not? The companies that offer what they call “seed potatoes” grow them particularly for that purpose and the real difference is in the elimination and control of a variety of bacterial and virus diseases that can affect potatoes. The other reason, of course, is choice. Commercial Potato growers use a very limited range of varieties that respond well to large scale production and that provide the highest yields. Until you have grown and tasted a Purple Viking or an All Red, (in the picture above,) you cannot understand why some of us surrender a significant piece of our garden space to potatoes.


Why is it More Difficult to Buy Them?
Storing and shipping live potatoes is much more complex than a simple packet of dormant seeds. There is also a much smaller market to serve. There are also lots of government regulations that control the flow of potatoes. It is much easier to buy your potatoes from a source in your own country than to attempt to have them shipped across borders. Even some states and provinces have regulations about the import or export of potatoes and they all have to do with the pests and diseases that can affect Potatoes. Everybody, naturally, wants to protect their domestic growers. The sheer weight and frost tenderness of Potatoes also adds to their distribution problems.


How Do I Do It?
Give Potatoes a little space this year and you’ll never be sorry. Go to, How Do I Grow Potatoes to see how easy it is.

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