The story of Yukon Gold

General Gardening
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I love Yukon Gold potatoes. They are early and for me are the best tasted young potatoes I ever boiled. They are not that productive, though, but it is OK for me, I can trade it for the taste. Unfortunately, the story is completely different this year. I was late to order, so I bought a bag from HD. Actually, this is not first time I bought them there. The package was clearly marked as Yukon Gold. Potatoes looked a bit bigger than usual, but I didn’t pay much attention. They prepared two surprises for me. First, the crop was much better then average Yukon gold, like Yukon Gold on steroids, both in numbers and size. Second, they are absolutely useless. We mostly eat potatoes boiled. The first time I boiled these potatoes I was surprised, that the top was ready almost in no time, when core stayed raw. By the time core was done the potatoes became mashed potato soup. Second time I cut them small, so they ready faster. It helped to some extent, but still, you can’t drain water from them, it is thick and stays between potato pieces. I have to mash it to eat, but I can’t even add milk - it is enough liquid in them as it is.

I wonder, what is that potatoes, so I wouldn’t buy them if I meet them under real name. They are oval round, larger than actual Yukon Gold, have light yellow flesh(I would say lighter then Yukon Gold) and pink eyes. I don’t think they are Yukon Gem - they resemble the appearance, but behave very different when boiled, I had the Yukon Gem last year and had no problem to boil them.

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I don’t know whether there is any connection between what happened to me and your story of Yukon Gold. This spring when I was planting my garden I came across some white potatoes from last year (not Yukon Gold) that had made it through the winter underground. They looked pretty good. When I steamed them, I found that the outsides became soft while the core was hard and crunchy. A weird combination that was quite inedible.
I wonder if someone cut corners and sold potatoes that had gone through a winter underground?

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To make it clear - I planted the potatoes I bought in HD, and now using potatoes grown in my soil.

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I s@Ve my own seed every year to avoid having to trust what is sold under a variety name. If it does not look like YG, return it toHD for your money. That’s the only advice I can offer.
Dennis
Kent, wa

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How is the disease pressure at your place? My yard is small and I have to plant potatoes in same spot every other year, the potatoes never grow disease free at my place and lack of cold storage doesn’t help as well…

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We don’t have the normal potato bugs, I do have to collect the slugs off them in Spring time, and I plant very early to take advantage of early rains and avoid high watering bills. Otherwise my potatoes have always been in the same location each year for the last 20 years. I haul in loads of horse manure and use the compost I create over the winter to cover each hill with a handful of 3-16, I keep them in my garage after temps fall below 70f and cover them from any light. By mid March the sprouts are too long to eat the potatoes but very nice fir planting. We only need to buy eating ones from Feb until Aug. If you have a pony stable nearby, use it to create a nice compost!
Dennis

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We have these varieties. YK is a longterm fav but most recently Viking purple would be my wife’s fav, followed by Yellow Finn. YF is the most difficult to find seed.

  1. Red Norland. More smooth and less eyes than Red Lasota
  2. Viking purple. More purple than red
  3. Red Lasoda. Not as round or smooth as Red Norland
  4. Red Potomac: Received with the fingerling order
  5. Yellow Finn
  6. Yukon Gold
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Can you post a picture of the tubers? How did you store them?

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I will make a picture when I get home. For storage, I didn’t have a chance to store them yet - I just dig out as much as I need to cook. The tops just started to decline.

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We’ve grown several varieties of yellow fleshed potatoes over the years. In addition to Yukon Gold, we have grown Carola, German Butterball, Yellow Finn, Anuschka, Bintje, Keuka Gold, and Vivaldi. In addition, Desiree and Romanz (also spelled Romanze) are two Red skinned potatoes with yellow flesh. We’ve also grown several fingerling varieties with yellow flesh.

I have nothing against Yukon Gold, but we prefer several varieties over Yukon Gold, so we no longer grow them. Some years, it had small yields, and compared to other varieties, the tubers were undersized. Yes, Yukon Golds are good boiling potatoes, but, unlike galinas, we like our spuds to be more versatile.

Anuschka is as early as Yukon Gold but has larger spuds and more versatility. Last year I decided it was my favorite of the yellow-fleshed varieties, because our Anuschka plants were more productive than they ever had been before. In addition, a fussy customer at farmers market who was ho hum about Carola was quite complimentary about Anuschkas.

Carola potato plants are almost always very consistent producers of large, rich flavored tubers. Some years they have been our favorites.

German Butterball is later in the season and full of flavor and has a darker yellow color than most yellow-fleshed varieties. I can forgive its false advertising. As far as I can tell there is nothing German about it, and instead of being ball-shaped, the tubers are oval to oblong.

I liked Yellow Finn, especially for boiling, but when we decided to reduce the number of varieties, it was dropped.

We grew Bintje because a friend highly recommended it, saying it was the only yellow-fleshed variety they grew. It was a paler yellow and had milder flavor than our favorites, so we only grew it two years.

We grew Keuka Gold the year we had a wet season, and they did very poorly, and we didn’t give them a second chance.

I will admit to acquiring Vivaldi because of the name. It was a disappointment. Few tubers per plant, not very yellow, and not much flavor. Our customers were not like me. No one was inspired to buy them simply because of the name. It is now gone from our potato patch.

I think I like our red skinned varieties best of all among yellow-fleshed potatoes. Desirees are large and flavorful. They are usually more pink than red on the outside, but they are variable. Not at its best as a boiled potato, but great baked and for other uses. When I read they were the most widely grown red-skinned potato in Europe, I wasn’t surprised.

Romanz used to be sold by Ronninger’s, but after its merger into the Potato Garden, several varieties, including Romanz, become unavailable. We’ve been able to keep our crop going over quite a few years now, but I fear if we have a crop failure we will be doomed. I like its color inside and out. It has moist, smooth flesh, so it is great for boiling, but it makes for a pretty good baked potato as well.

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Here’s a few of them.

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I am not as good at identifying potatoes as I thought. But I have a theory.

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Potatoes have different cooking qualities, starchy, waxy, moist, firm, mealy, etc. I think, (don’t quote me on this), that this new variety of potato is more of a starchy kind. That’s why you get the thicker liquid. Yukon gold I think is a general kind.
That’s the only thing I can think of. Unless with this different variety you are cooking it too fast.

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Yukon Gold inherits a lot of traits from the diploid yellow parent including small size, tender flesh, tendency to set a lot of smaller potatoes vs a few much larger potatoes.

Have any of you grown Sarpo Mira or Sarpo Axona?

I’ve grown about 200 different potato varieties over the years. A few are memorable and highly recommended.

La Ratte - productive long slim waxy potato that is excellent boiled
Kennebec - good general purpose potato in the southeast, makes very good french fries
Azul Toro - A very good deep purple potato with high production of mostly small tubers
Skagit Gold - One of Tom Wagner’s yellow flesh potatoes, small, productive, fried or boiled

I could name a few others, but these are a good list with two that are very hard to source.

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OK, so the mystery potato I have is too starchy. And what can you do with starchy potato?(other then making… well … starch)

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Because @mrsg47 mentioned La Ratte potatoes as a good French fingerling

…I decided to grow both La Ratte and Russian fingerling to compare. These are La Ratte on the left and Russian fingerling on the right.
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They look similar but the skin on La Ratte is very tender vs. chewy on Russian fingerling. Will be switching to La Ratte!

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Mine Ratte plants are just starting to turn brown. i cannot wait to see how many I get! They’ll be ready end of August.

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Kennebec is a beast in Maryland. Huge, clean, shapely potatoes. Not as prone to scab as I would have thought.

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My understanding of Anuschka is it’s too waxy for fries or mashed whereas Yukon works well for both. Is that your observation?

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I never grew the two varieties in the same year, but I thought they were similar in waxiness, neither the best for mashed potatoes, but acceptable.