Here’s my overall summary. I didn’t keep my potatoes properly labeled, so I can only definitively distinguish some of them.
In parenthesis is the skin/flesh color.
Grow again:
Yellow Haze- (yellow/yellow) Large, productive, and very tasty.
Anuschka- (yellow/yellow) Early, productive and tasty.
Bora Valley- (purple/purple&white)- very productive, early, and pretty tasty (though different from the two yellows above).
Magic Molly- (purple/dark purple) - This one is on the cusp of falling into the next group due to inconsistent yields, but it is reasonably tasty and the dark flesh is just so pretty that I’ll grow it again.
May or may not grow again:
Pinto Gold- (red & yellow/yellow fingerling) Tasty, but only medium productive and quite a few smaller ones. But they are pretty, with the splotched look.
Huckleberry Gold- (purple/yellow) Tasty yellow flesh, with purple skin. I would move it up, but don’t recall it being that productive.
Yellow Finn- (yellow/yellow) I actually mixed these up with the Yellow Haze and Anuschka in storage, so I can’t be sure how good they are. But I haven’t noticed any of the yellow ones being bad, so these must be at least reasonably good. Likewise, I don’t recall the yield, but I think it was at least middle of the road if not pretty good.
Others in this category that I didn’t grow this year:
All Blue
German Butterball
Never growing again:
Peanut- (yellow-brown/yellow) lots of tiny potatoes. Not super productive and a lot of work to harvest and cook all the little buggers. Nothing special from a taste perspective either. Will probably pass on them in the future, but don’t hate them.
Harvest Moon- (purple/yellow) Middling taste (not poor like the next two), but not productive/healthy.
Papa Cacho- (red/pink, long fingerling) Robust, healthy, vigorous plants, which produce medium sized crop of poor tasting (dry) potatoes.
King Harry- (white/white) Very productive, but not all that good tasting, which left me eating a lot of so-so potatoes. I thought I would never finish them, so that I could bring up a batch of good tasting ones from storage in the garage…It’s not as noticeable how bad they are if you use enough fat with them. Cooked in butter, they aren’t bad. But if you have any other varieties with them, you can immediately tell which ones are much tastier.
Anyone got their potatoes planned out for next year yet? I’ll probably do at least a couple from my top 4. I’m going to check out TMPL to see if anything else catches my eye. Maybe a red-fleshed one? I tried a couple reds 2-3 years ago, but wasn’t thrilled with either. I remember one of them (Mountain Rose of Adirondak Red) rotted for me. I’m not sure which, but I think that AR was the rotter.
Edit:
Current my plan is to try to find some Crimson Goldfingers at the specialty store (I haven’t been there is some time to know if they are back in stock). I may pickup some French Fingerlings there as well, as they used to carry them.
From TMPL, the plan is:
Purple Peruvian- 3 lbs. New from TMPL, but I think I’ve had this one before from a store. I vaugely recall it being good, so it’s worth a try.
Natascha- 5 lbs. No Anuschka this year and this (a new one) is the reccomended as an early yellow sub.
French Fingerling- 3 lbs (assuming I don’t find them at the store)
Vivaldi- 2.5 lbs- New, a mid-season yellow from Europe. Supposed to be naturally buttery. From what I read online, it is also slightly lower calorie than other potatoes. Of course, I’m not sure if that is that a good thing.
Yellow Haze- 5 lbs
Bora Valley- 5 lbs