The Nutrition of Potatoes

One of our more successful crops this summer has been red potatoes. We have gradually been increasing our skill, we hope, at growing enough to see us through the winter until another crop is ready to harvest. With this in mind, and my curiosity about what kind of balanced nutrition we are growing, here is the latest in my series of posts about the nutritional content of our garden crops.

One large, raw potato with skin contains the following nutrients:

• protein 7.5g
• calories 284
• carbohydrates 68g
• fiber 8.1g
• starch 57g
• vitamins A, C, K

• niacin
• folate
• choline
• omega-3 fatty acids
• omega-6 fatty acids
• calcium
• iron
• magnesium
• phosphorus
• potassium
• sodium

We have cut up some of the potatoes we harvested this spring to plant for a fall crop. The interesting thing about them, is that they came from the ‘potato bush’ that we grew from our crop from last summer (2013). When I was planting the garden this spring, we had a few small, shriveled potatoes left from last summer that had very long, leggy sprouts on them. We figured they were done for and were going to just throw them out. Well, I decided to pile them up in the corner of the garden and throw some dirt on them. They

grew…..and grew……and turned into a tightly clustered ‘potato bush’. So, some of the potatoes we are planting now for our fall crop came from last year’s potatoes. We want to continue this experiment and see if we can grow a self-sustaining crop. You can also use store bought potatoes for seed potatoes, we have used them more than once. Our feed stores have seed potatoes here in the spring, but you never see them in the late summer or fall. So, even though we have bought some seed potatoes each spring, we don’t know what variety of red potato we are currently growing. 

We know from the history of the potato that many peoples have utilized this tuber as a part of their daily diet. Potatoes are high in carbohydrates and starch which are very important nutritional qualities in a survival situation. If we are sitting on the couch reading or writing blog posts, we probably don’t need as many carbohydrates in our meals. Nevertheless, potatoes have been an American mainstay for many, many years. Ask Frank, the carnivore, meat and potatoes make a mighty good meal.

Until next time – Fern