Puny purple potatoes

Some of you may recall a post back in May or June when Jake and I planted approximately 3,500 purple potato plants. Ours was to be Peasant Garden 2010. We were going to have enough spuds to feed an army of Proletariats!

Planting potatoes is a fairly straightforward business. A potato is cut into sections, each section must bear an eye, or sprout.  Only non hybrid spuds can be used (in other words, planting potatoes from the grocery store won’t work). Plant the spud in the dirt, sprout side up–or is it down? Does it matter?   And prepare for a season of purple mashed potatoes.

Unfortunately, between the pregnancy, delivery and the lockdown that is mommyhood, Peasant Garden 2010 turned into an unruly mass of weeds devoid of anything resembling care.

But we’re not a couple of yokels that lets work go to waste. Oh no!  A few days ago, Jake and  I tore up the weeds and tilled the parched soil, on the hunt for our precious spuds.  And we found a motherload.

These will go in our root cellar.

The only problem with digging up purple spuds in a woefully neglected garden?  The potatoes tended to be smaller than the cut segments we planted!!!

So we’re calling these miniature purple potatoes.  Does their puny size justify the planting?  At first, I thought not.  But after tossing them with olive oil, salt and pepper and roasting them at 400 degrees, I am inclined to say MMMMmmmm.