From cellar to supper
Scroll to grow a potato. Seasons are approximate, frost dates are Ontario's problem, and no potatoes were rushed in the making of this page.
01 · Late winter
Lake Scugog is frozen solid and ice-fishing huts dot the bay. The seed potatoes are snoozing in a cool, dark cellar, dreaming of dirt.
Spud fact: Potatoes store best around 4–7°C. Colder than that and their starch turns to sugar. Sweet, but wrong.
02 · April
Seed potatoes come out into the light to 'chit', growing short, stubby green sprouts. Think of it as potato stretching before a big run.
Spud fact: Chitting can give you a harvest a couple of weeks earlier. It also makes potatoes look like tiny aliens.
03 · May
Once the danger of hard frost has passed, seed pieces (each with an eye or two) go about 10 cm deep, roughly a foot apart. Then: rain. Lots of rain.
Spud fact: You don't plant potato seeds. You plant potatoes. Every potato is a clone of its parent.
04 · June
Green shoots punch through the soil. We pile dirt up around the stems ('hilling') so the growing spuds stay buried and out of the sun.
Spud fact: Sunlight turns potatoes green and makes solanine. Green spuds are grumpy spuds. Don't eat them.
05 · July
The plants bloom with little white and purple flowers. Underground, tubers are bulking up fast. Above ground, we're hand-picking Colorado potato beetles.
Spud fact: Potato flowers are related to tomato flowers. Potatoes, tomatoes and peppers are all in the nightshade family.
06 · August
Hot days, cottage traffic on Highway 7A, and potatoes swelling underground. Sneaky 'new potatoes' can be bandit-dug from the edges.
Spud fact: A single healthy plant can produce 5 to 10+ potatoes. Some overachievers do 20.
07 · September
Vines yellow and die back. We wait two weeks so skins toughen up, then fork them out of the ground. This is the best day of the year.
Spud fact: After digging, potatoes are 'cured' for 1–2 weeks so cuts heal and skins set. That's how they keep all winter.
08 · October →
Bagged, sorted, and driven around the Scugog area by people who definitely sampled a few. Then the snow flies and the whole cycle starts again.
Spud fact: Potatoes were the first vegetable grown in space, aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia in 1995.