About Potatoes

Potatoes originally grew in South America and spread across the Americas through the trade of indigenous farmers. Through the age of European exploration, Europeans recognized that potatoes were an energy and nutrient rich food source and began to ship and grow them across the globe.

While most plants are harvested for their fruits, seeds, or stalks that are above the soil, plants like potatoes are harvested for the stems that grow under the soil. Tuberous plants grow thick protrusions on the underground portions of their stems. Energy is stored inside these protrusions and utilized by the plant when it is needed.

Potatoes are usually grown from seed stock. If uneaten, a potato will start to send out shoots from the "eyes" on the potato. Potato eyes are locations on the tuber where stems start to grow and similar to branches growing from bud sites on a tree. To start a new plant, potatoes can either be quartered or left whole and planted. The planting needs to have an eye or sprout site.

As potatoes start to grow, the plant first starts to grow the root systems utilizing the energy in the remaining tuber. The plant then starts to send up shoots and leaves. As the roots, stems, and leaves continue to grow, energy is sent to tuber sites on the roots. These tuber sites are harvested as the potato. Potatoes can also be grown from seed. Potatoes that are grown from seed will have somewhat different characteristics than the parent plants.

Potatoes that are harvested around fifty to fifty-five days are considered new potatoes. New potatoes have thin skin and need to be consumed or processed quickly. For storage potatoes, it takes between seventy to a hundred twenty days before they are harvested. These potatoes are harvested after the plant above ground fully dies off. Potatoes can be harvested by hand but are harvested mechanically on large scale farms.

Trip to the Farm

Take a virtual field trip to Marquart Farms, a real NY potato farm and home to NY Chips, to learn how potatoes are stored long term, processed for shipping, and how farm hands prepare for the spring planting season.

Fun Facts

• Salt potatoes are a common and historic Central New York summertime staple. Syracuse, NY once had a vibrant salt production industry. To extract salt from briny water, workers would boil the water causing water to evaporate leaving pure salt. For lunch, these workers would boil "new" or immature potatoes in the salty water adding lots of butter once the potatoes were cooked.
• Marquart Farms in Wyoming County harvests around forty-five million pounds of potatoes. Since the potatoes grown in New York are of such high quality and perfect for chip making, the Marquart family started their own chip brand, New York Chips in 2016. It is the only chip company to use 100% New York grown and sourced potatoes.

Sources

• http://www.gardening.cornell.edu/homegardening/scenec6be.html
• https://www.vegetables.cornell.edu/crops/potatoes/