...three potato, four.... But how do you know when they are ready to harvest?
In Sweden, new potatoes are an integral part of summer. The plants put on their flowers in June, and in very warm years the first new potatoes can be pulled out of the ground for the Midsommar celebrations at the end of the month. But this year was one of the coldest Mays in Swedish history, and I was pretty sure they weren't going to be ready that early.
Out came the shovel and we decided to give it a go. Most people recommend harvesting potatoes with a pitchfork-like tool which we don't have, so we use a shovel. Occasionally we slice a potato in half with the shovel blade, but not often enough to warrant buying another garden too.
The two plants we pulled up yeilded 11 small-to-medium sized potatoes. Not bad, but to feed our family of 8 we figured we'd have to pull up at least 5 plants, and that seemed like a little too many if we were going to have a proper autumn harvest.
Of course ours tasted the best!
In Sweden, new potatoes are an integral part of summer. The plants put on their flowers in June, and in very warm years the first new potatoes can be pulled out of the ground for the Midsommar celebrations at the end of the month. But this year was one of the coldest Mays in Swedish history, and I was pretty sure they weren't going to be ready that early.
A quick Google search led me to the blog of an Englishman, and northern England being approximately the same latitude as southern Sweden, I decided to go with his advice: the second week of July is the time to harvest potatoes. He wasn't talking new potatoes either... He was doing his main harvest.
Out came the shovel and we decided to give it a go. Most people recommend harvesting potatoes with a pitchfork-like tool which we don't have, so we use a shovel. Occasionally we slice a potato in half with the shovel blade, but not often enough to warrant buying another garden too.
The two plants we pulled up yeilded 11 small-to-medium sized potatoes. Not bad, but to feed our family of 8 we figured we'd have to pull up at least 5 plants, and that seemed like a little too many if we were going to have a proper autumn harvest.
So we mixed in our potatoes (the white ones) with some store-bought new potatoes (yellow) and a few red potatoes we had left over from another recipe. It made a very pretty potato medley.
How do you determine when it's time to pull up your potatoes?
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