Bintje potato plants shortly before harvest
For those of you who visit regularly, you will have seen a few references to Bintje potatoes in previous posts. I've been waiting for the harvest to write this post.
The story started on March 19th 2014 when I was in the local kitchen store "Providence Fine Living". This is my favorite store in town and I've gotten to know and enjoy interacting with the proprietor, Ivan.
Well just maybe the story started 19 years ago when I planted regular potatoes in the garden. I didn't do that again because it was not worth the potato bug fight. I had to be out there every day killing the bugs by hand unless I wanted to use pesticides...which i did not. They just gobbled up the plants.
The story picks up again last summer when we left Moses Lake at 5 in the morning and saw the spray planes flying over the potato fields just before harvest; spraying herbicide on the (commercially grown) potato fields to kill the plants. Ummm...I think that herbicide goes straight into the potato.
Based on these two experiences I decided I needed to reduce potatoes in my diet except for a very rare occasion. After this experience I occasionally bought organic fingerling potatoes at the grocery store.
The story picks up again, as I said, on March 19, 2014 when I went in to purchase a birthday gift for my daughter. Ivan asks if I have my garden planted?
Oh the beets, lettuce, spinach and peas are in. Most of the garden is still a mess of weeds from last year but I planted what was cleaned up so far. He said he wasn't done with the clean up yet so had not started planting. I say if I wait until all the clean up is done I won't ever get the seeds in the ground.
Baked Bintje potatoes...the largest ones we had this year.
Then he asks if I am planting potatoes and I say no and I won't because I don't like the potato bugs. "He says, I plant potatoes and don't have potato bugs." I look at him like he is joking. He continues on to say something about how our current culture has moved away from quality to quantity (though I only partially agree with this). When he was growing up in Denmark they planted Bintje potatoes and he continues to do so getting his organic seed potatoes from a certain catalog. Well since he could not remember which catalog at that moment, I went home and got on the Internet and found a supplier of organic Bintje potatoes just a couple hours away in Le Grande, Oregon. It was on Etsy.
We planted those potatoes in early April and then harvested them the end of July. We have so enjoyed them. Yes they are better than potatoes from the super market and better than any I've ever tasted. You will see a post about Lefse recently. It was the best ever.
Oven fries:
- Preheat oven to 400 degrees
- Cut the smallest Bintje potatoes (1 to 2" ones) into small slices.
- Coat in 1/4 cup grape seed oil and sprinkle with sea salt.
- Spread in a single layer in a baking sheet with sides. (Pampered Chef Clay Jelly Roll Pan)
- Bake 15 minutes, turn the fries over and Bake 15 minutes on the other side.
Bintje potatoes become part of the decor at our house...notice that the wheat berries do too.
Impressed once again by your attention to detail - thankful for this blog whereby I learned of your endeavor and got educated. I do not remember having potato bug problems in our garden when I was a kid, but we sure got them in our huge garden patch here a couple of years. We moved the garden patch and that took care of it - or maybe it was just a different year. You are very convincing - and if I can get motivated to amend ours soil, I may try this next year. The weeds are certainly a problem as well - and they seem to be extra tough in poor soil. Duane and I did spend a summer hand picking potato bugs. Also spent an afternoon battling a caterpillar infestation in an apple tree. It was labor intensive and the yuck factor was right up there on the scale, but our determination paid off.
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