Potato Recovery

The frost that we had here a few weeks ago really did a number on my potato patch.  The hardiest potatoes were the purple vikings and they seemed mostly unaffected by the frost.  The yukon gold and the red chieftain potatoes didn't do as well.  Both varieties died back to the level of the mulch that covered the bed.  I was happy to discover that the plants were hardy enough to start making a comeback just a couple weeks after the cold snap and started putting out new growth again.  I think the chieftains are having a better time of it than the yukon gold, but both are making progress.

The purple vikings are the row on the left, the yukon golds run down the middle row and the red chieftains are in the row on the right.  The purple vikings have already begun to flower, so they should be making lots of potatoes for me this summer since they are doing so well.  I also had a bed that I left to the volunteer potatoes that came up from last year, so that should round out my harvest when the time comes.

There are a few other random crops in this bed like carrots, turnips and chard, but a good portion of it is volunteer potatoes - purple viking I think, so I will be eating lots of purple potatoes this winter.