Today is the first official day of our potato trials here on the farm. This season we are experimenting with close to 40 varieties of potatoes to see what will work best for us here. Half will go into the field and we will grow them on a large scale and half are in pots in front of the studio. Something we learned this season is that seed potatoes are very expensive, especially if you want organic, so we are starting small and working up. I contacted a seed breeder and asked him to send me whatever potatoes he had that were unique and he did, so here we go! I will be starting a potato trial page on the website to track what we are growing so if you are interested you should check in from time to time.
This all started 3 weeks ago at the market when a customer asked for a Colombian potato called phureja. He had been looking all over for them and couldn't find them anywhere. I told him I would look into it and now we are growing 40 varieties of potatoes! These phureja are not easy to come by. I spent hours and hours tracking them down. Even going so far as to try and brow beat some English friends of mine into finding them and sending them to me. Apparently the only place to get the seed is in the UK. How weird is that? Finally I tracked down this breeder and asked for help. He had some of the coveted phureja. In fact he has 20 varieties. Which one was I looking for? I of course had no idea which one I was looking for so, I had him send them all. Hopefully there is one in there that is what our customer was looking for. I have dreams of him coming to the farmers market stand and being blown away that I found him his potato. They look like really cool potatoes. For the sake of the trial though we are counting them as one variety or it will get too confusing.
So really this is why you want to have a personal relationship with your farmers. If you want it, they may just grow it for you.
This all started 3 weeks ago at the market when a customer asked for a Colombian potato called phureja. He had been looking all over for them and couldn't find them anywhere. I told him I would look into it and now we are growing 40 varieties of potatoes! These phureja are not easy to come by. I spent hours and hours tracking them down. Even going so far as to try and brow beat some English friends of mine into finding them and sending them to me. Apparently the only place to get the seed is in the UK. How weird is that? Finally I tracked down this breeder and asked for help. He had some of the coveted phureja. In fact he has 20 varieties. Which one was I looking for? I of course had no idea which one I was looking for so, I had him send them all. Hopefully there is one in there that is what our customer was looking for. I have dreams of him coming to the farmers market stand and being blown away that I found him his potato. They look like really cool potatoes. For the sake of the trial though we are counting them as one variety or it will get too confusing.
So really this is why you want to have a personal relationship with your farmers. If you want it, they may just grow it for you.