I bought some of those delicious tiny potatoes. Put them in veg bin along w ith other potatoes -- small red. Went to nuke tinies today. SPROUTING! If they're babies, why are they prematurely geriatric. And if they're not babies, how is size controlled? Is it a function of species? 1 week seem s rather soon to start sprouting. Dinner companion said it's because they are so long in transit.
Any experience out there?
HB
Hi Higgs,
I do believe your dinner companion was correct.
Does this help?
"Potato sprouts often appear when you store potatoes for a long time ... Research has suggested that if the main part of the potato is still firm, then it has most of its nutrients intact and can be eaten after removing the sprouted part. However, if the potato is shrunken and wrinkled, it should not be eaten.
I always loved to see them sprout. Means they truly were organic. Same when I find a bug, though a lot more grossed out.
-T
Not true, so-called organic potatoes sprout just as readily. Anyway there is no such thing as organic potatoes... potatoes are attacked by so many soil borne diseases that they must be chemically treated if there is to be a crop. Actually there is no such thing as organic produce unless grown in a greenhouse held under clean room laboratory conditions.
ong with other potatoes -- small red. Went to nuke tinies today. SPROUTI NG! If they're babies, why are they prematurely geriatric. And if they're not babies, how is size controlled? Is it a function of species? 1 week seems rather soon to start sprouting. Dinner companion said it's because they are so long in transit.
Please let's not veer off into another of those organic-other debates. (No , Todd! Down, boy!)
I am trying to find out whether those tiny potatoes are grown that way; IO W genetically ? altered to stay tiny. Or whether they are "regular" potatoe s harvested early; seems unlikely.
So am I dealing with a RIPE potato that has been shipped all over creation for weeks, therefore ready to sprout when it gets to me? How does it stay so tiny?
TIA
HB
There are many types of potato, those small ones were developed to grow that way, same as fingerlings were developed.
Hi Brooklyn1,
I am not sure how you got there, but what I was saying was that a sprouted potato is a tip off that is has not been sprayed with an anti sprouting agent. I suppose a conventional one could not be sprayed, but usually they all are.
There may not be "perfect" organic produce, but they sure do taste better (some of the production organic farms, not so much, picked too green) and use a lot less persistent chemicals. I would say, even if they are not perfect, they certainly are more wholesome.
But to each his own. That is what the free market is for. You have a choice. You can buy produce dripping with chemistry set chemicals if you like or ones with a a lot less chemicals that don't persist. It is whatever floats you boat.
Just out of curiosity, what is your take on "Wild Grown"?
-T
Why? Why" KIDS THESE DAYS!
I think what you may have come across is the same vegi comes in all shapes and sized. Marketing removes the ones that the producers don't think you will buy.
When they local farm was still open, all the weird looking tomatoes got fed to the chickens.
No, sprouting does not mean that they are organic.
That's not right either. Spuds can be very easily grown without using chemicals.
They are just tiny spuds. They could be new potatoes or old potatoes and they were just have been harvested whilst they were tiny. In other words, size has nothing to do with genetic modification (unless you are very unlucky and are managing to find the only GM spuds in your area).
There will have been other big spuds which were also harvested at the same time and these tiny ones are just put in a different pack/part of the marketed product.
No they weren't.
Sometimes the tiny gourmet potatoes are varieties selected for small size, and will never form enormous spuds, and sometimes they are varieties that can grow big that are harvested small, before the vines die back (what gardeners would call new potatoes which would definitely have a limited shelf life). But sometimes they are a way for potato growers to make good money on potatoes that would once upon a time be put with the culls -- potatoes deemed too damaged or too small to ship to market.
Potatoes that sprout in your house have may been in the pipeline too long, or may have been exposed to temperatures lower or higher than ideal during shipment or in the store. (Temperature extremes can trigger sprouting.)
My step-grandpop the huskster used to buy potatoes that had been exposed to bad conditions in transit at the wholesale market (and which were sold as damaged goods) then sell them from a truck as home grown. As there is no justice, my dear, sweet grandma died young, and the old bast^h^h^h man lived to a ripe old age.
True. Just means they were not sprayed with anti-sprouting agents. Also means they are still alive. And, conventional producers usually spray their stuff.
It's been several years since I've gone through potatoes quickly. Every bag of supermarket russets that I've bought in that time (typically each Thanksgiving) has sprouted and started to grow.
Hi Drew,
Back where I could eat the things, I always loved to see them sprout. I really can't figure out why the marketing folks think folks would be offended by them. Maybe they think we think they would be stale if they sprouted. I would look for wilt for that.
When I lived in Germany, my landlord would buy a huge sack of potatoes every fall, stick them in a special drawer in the basement and eat on them all winter. By the end of the winter, the drawer had sprouts growing out of it. Hysterical looking.
-T
:-)) Yep. That is what spuds always do. When I was a kid, we always got a hessian bag full of spuds from the family farm (that's a burlap sack full in USian) where they were produced commercially. It took a fair while to fang our way through them so by the time we got to the bottom of the bag, the spuds were always sprouting; sometimes out through the hessian.
Hi Fran,
Just a trivia question, did your family sort your potatoes by size or just ship them off as is?
-T
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