It’s happening in favorite grocery stores and pantries around Baja Arizona.  Potatoes are awakening!  Some are even turning green with chlorophyll showing in their skins.  They know. Time in the low desert to PLANT POTATOES–soon!!–while the weather is chilly and while we are enjoying fantastic soil moisture.

Yukon Gold potato beginning to sprout, skin turning green… This potato wants to be planted!  But wait–no waste here.  We must always be thinking SUSTAINABILITY, right?

Tia Marta here to share a neat trick taught to me by ace heirloom gardener Tom Swain.  Planting potatoes doesn’t have to be a big deal, not expensive nor time-consuming, nor does it require special “seed potatoes,”  no sacrificing luscious chunks of whole potatoes that you would rather eat.  With planting potatoes you can “have your potato cake and eat it too!”

Place potato peelings in a flat dish like this shallow plastic tub. Rinse and drain 1-2 times per day until little rootlets sprout out from under the tiny green leaf sprouts at the “eye.”

These active Yukon Gold peelings sprouted fast and are ready to plant in the garden!

The simple trick is to peel your potatoes to include an “eye” in each peel, the anatomical “action spots” where new life can generate (not hard to find eyes). Knife-peeling may work better for this than with a potato-peeler.  Compost the bad-looking peelings but save the healthy ones to a flat-bottom dish.  Keep the peelings fresh and damp to sprout by rinsing and draining daily, leaving a little water around them, until you have time to dig a garden trench for planting.

Potato plants (Solanum tuberosum) store their life-energy in starchy nodules–potatoes– that form at the tips of modified underground stems or rhizomes.  Green potato skins happen when potatoes are exposed to light–so store potatoes in a dark place.  Avoid eating any green skins of potatoes as they are very bitter and may become toxic.  Better to use green peelings for planting.

Planting my sprouted potato peels — Potato gardening in the desert is different from wetter or temperate regions where plants must be mounded up.  In deserts start them deep:  Dig a trench in good garden soil about a spade depth and place sprouted peels at the bottom…..

Close-up view of potato peels set at bottom of garden “trench”

As I began covering the potato peels on damp garden soil, worms came out to see what the action was. They will assist keeping the soil turned and loosened as I continue to bury the young growth this winter.

Keep a pile of good garden soil at the ready.  As your young plants emerge from the soil, gradually, gently, keep burying them, or top-dressing them with compost, over their days and weeks of growth to encourage the underground stems to continuously elongate, thereby adding space for more and more potatoes to form. Try never to let a little potato get exposed to the sun.  As your plants grow, and as you cover them, your trench will fill, then hopefully it will even become a linear mound full of small potatoes by late spring.  Don’t forget to water regularly as rains diminish.  They need cold or cool weather for best growth, so get them into the ground by end of January at the latest.  You could start them as soon as November’s cool weather sets in.  Plan ahead to protect your potatoes from excavating ground squirrels, rock squirrels or packrats.

Having our “taters and eating them too”– I’m making garlic-parsley-scalloped potatoes with red potatoes I peeled for planting.

Tia Marta’s Scalloped Potatoes Recipe with variations

Into a pyrex dish, slice 6-8 partly peeled potatoes (Skins are nutritious!).  Add 1 cup of grated cheddar cheese, 1+ tsp sea salt, garlic powder and/or black pepper to taste, and milk (soy or rice milk OK) 1-2cups to barely cover potatoes.  As additional seasoning options add 2 Tbsp Mano y Metate Mole mix, 1 Tbsp parsley, and/or 1 tsp paprika. Mix, Cover and Bake at 325 F for ca.45 minutes until all ingredients are happily melded.  [For solar-oven cooking use dark saucepan and dark lid.]. Don’t burn your tongue when you serve them piping hot–and do enjoy the fruits of your potato-labors!

No waste here… I’m using partly-peeled-for-planting red spuds in this delicious variation on scalloped potatoes–seasoned with Mano y Metate’s yummy Mole Verde!  (available at NativeSeedsSEARCH  and many specialty markets in Tucson, online at http://www.manoymetate.com)

Organic new red potatoes ready to peel for sprouting AND for cooking–  Now go for it–don’t waste those peelings!!  Make them work for you.  All it takes is a little bit of garden space and you will have new potatoes for potato salad by next summer.  Happy peeling and planting!

Tia Marta is an artist, ethnobotanist, and teacher about Baja Arizona’s gastronomic history and prehistory.  Her heirloom foods and/or “foodie” notecards can be found at NativeSeedsSEARCH, Tohono Chul Park, the Presidio Museum, Old Town Artisans, Arizona State Museum on UA Campus, Tucson Museum of Art, the UNICEF Store, and online at www.flordemayoarts.com.  Catch one of her Native Foods workshops at Friends of Tucson’s Birthplace’s Mission Garden, or join her downtown Gastronomy Tour at Tucson Presidio.  Coming up soon!–Join us to view her traditional foods artwork at the ArtTrails Open Studio Tour on Tucson’s West Side, Saturday and Sunday February 2-3, 10am-4pm both days.  For directions see the centerfold in Zocalo, the Desert Leaf calendar, or go to www.ArtTrails.org.  See you there!