Oak Slough Farm

6.5.2024

Potato Destiny or Disaster? 

Our potato saga began St. Patrick’s Day weekend.  Sadie had met an awesome group of people that comes to Cisco’s ale house on Thursday nights after work for beer and free pool.  So, Sadie threw a potato planting party and for all their help planting the potatoes, she fed them a delicious dinner of corned beef and cabbage. It was the most fun I’ve ever had planting potatoes.  The next day, we covered the ground with row cover to keep the ground warm and hoped for the best.  

A few weeks later, the little potato shoots started to emerge.  When the plants were bigger, we took off the row cover and started hoeing weeds.  We also used the hoes to hill the soil up around the plants.  Cisco was the champ at hilling.  But to be fair, Asa wasn’t home from school yet.  That would have been a good match up.  I certainly couldn’t keep up with Cisco.

The plants continued to grow and grow.  Eventually, we had to add risers to the sprinklers.  We planted five varieties, an early and later variety each of yellow and red new potatoes, plus some russets.  We were excited when some began to flower, because that meant two weeks until harvesting new potatoes.  Unfortunately, none of us had the foresight to write down which bed flowered first, so once the flowers were gone, it was hard to tell which would be ready first.  Last week, one variety in particular started to get brown spots on the leaves.  We were afraid it was a blight, so we gave all the plants a foliar feeding of compost and kelp tea.  We hoped to boost them against the blight fungus.  Then a sprinkler riser broke, and the resulting flood washed the soil off of five plants of the most blighty looking plants.  It also exposed a nice pile of potatoes.  Perhaps, the brown spots were more of a sign it was time to harvest than a blight.  We can hope.

Bubbie’s Potato Salad

Sadie turned the pile of exposed potatoes into a delicious potato salad with our dill, green onion, and tomato.  New potatoes are harvested when the plant is still green while storage potatoes are harvest a few weeks after the plants have fully died. This gives the new potatoes a soft, tender skin and an incredibly creamy inside.  For the potato salad: Boil 2 pounds of cut potatoes (about 2”x2”) with a healthy tablespoon of salt. Potatoes are done when a fork is easily inserted. Pour off the water and let cool. Meanwhile, combine 1 tbsp yellow or Dijon mustard, ¼ c. dill, ¼ c. olive oil, ¼ c. apple cider vinegar, ½ tsp pepper, and ½ tsp salt in a big bowl and stir together to combine. This is mostly to get the mustard mixed in well; you will add more oil, vinegar, salt and pepper to taste once you have it assembled. Add 4 or so green onions, chopped and a pint of cherry tomatoes sliced in half. Cut your cooled potatoes to bite-sized and add. Mix to combine; add more oil, vinegar, salt pepper to taste. Best if cold. Optional hard-boiled eggs for more protein and flavor. 

Logo

I don’t know if she’d admit it, but Kat is an artist.  While at school, she worked on creating a logo for us.  We agreed on the basic idea, but pretty much everyone had different ideas about what exactly should be the final design.  If you’ve seen previous issues of this newsletter, you may notice a few things are missing on the logo for this one.  I don’t know if it is the final design, but it is the one we sent to the sticker maker, MJS Solution, LLC, in Gerber to have stickers made for the Red Bluff, Wednesday evening Farmer’s Market.  Kat also painted our booth sign.  Hopefully, some people brave the 107-degree weather, our vegetables don’t melt, and it turns out to be a good and fun first market.

Stay Well – Josh