I made potatoes!

Last spring I had some sprouty Yukon Gold potatoes, and rather than just throwing them away, I decided to put the in a pot to see if they'd grow. (I tried the same thing with garlic last year but didn't have much luck. I stuck the cloves in the dirt and waited, and all summer they didn't really do anything (I think a few put up feeble little stems) so in the fall I just put the pot back in the garage and forgot about it. The following spring when I started getting ready to plant stuff again, I went to get my pots out of the garage, and *then* the garlic was growing, after half a year with no water and minimal light. I tried to keep it going but it didn't last. What I didn't realize at the time was that there is garlic that you plant in the spring to harvest in the fall, and then there is also garlic you plant in the fall to harvest in the spring, so I probably planted fall garlic in the spring and just ended up screwing with its little garlic head.)

But I've grown potatoes before, and they're easy and fun. You don't need seeds or anything, just a sprouty potato, and you don't actually bury them in the dirt, you just nestle them in on top of the soil and then heap a bunch of leaves or straw over the top. I've tried burying them in the past, but they grow better if you don't. The plants shoot up like weeds and put out pretty white flowers and then they die. The tubers are ready to harvest when the tops have died back completely.


So I dug my potatoes yesterday. I had them in a big pot, maybe about 16 inches across, and I think I squeezed about seven or so sprouty taters in there, which is seriously overcrowding them, and I probably would have harvested more if I'd actually planted fewer. But I still dug up 21 potatoes, ranging in size from four inches to 1/4 inch.


I don't think I'll be eating the 1/4 inch one. How would you cook it?