Squirt Potatoes

It’s my own fault, I missed the opportunity to dig all the potatoes out of the garden in early December. I should have.

Since December we have been frozen solid for a couple of weeks, then had a good coating of snow hang around for a few more weeks before finally warming slightly and thawing the ground.

I still had about 5 hills of potatoes that had not been dug. I headed out to see just what I could find.

The weather froze most of the potatoes solid. Now that they are warmer, even though they look like perfectly viable spuds, they are squishy when squeezed lightly. I refer to them as squirt potatoes, for if you don’t handle them gently, they will squirt their insides all over the outsides.

Squirt potatoes are not edible and many times they are downright stinky. If you have ever had a potato go rotten in the kitchen, you are aware that potatoes do not smell like other vegetables as they decompose. With the starch content in them, it is more like the smell of rotting flesh. Maggots love rotting potatoes. That is all the detail that I will put in this post as the mere thought of it makes me a little queasy.

I did manage to collect a few un-squirty potatoes out of the hills in the garden. It was enough to make hashbrowns for a couple of breakfasts, a crockpot full of cream of potato soup, and mashed potatoes to go with a chicken fried steak dinner.

The rest of the squirts will remain in the garden where the crop will return to the earth as I till the ground during the next dry spell.

Next year, I’ll try to get the last of the harvest dug a little quicker.