The potato is a tuber of Solanum tuberosum, a perennial plant of the Solanaceae, or nightshade family, which is one of the most widely used vegetables in Europe and North America. There are six other species of minor importance. There are thousands of varieties in cultivation.
The potato is unrelated to the sweet potato. It is sometimes referred to as the "Irish Potato" to distinguish it.
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History
The potato plant is thought to be native to the Andes and cultivated originally by the Inca people, spreading over time throughout other Native American groups and becoming a staple food.
It has long been popularly taught that Sir Walter Raleigh was responsible for bringing the potato to England, but historians now believe that this is a myth, as the first potatoes apparantly appeared in North America in the 18th century. Sir Francis Drake is more likely to be responsible. In 1586, after battling the Spaniards in the Caribbean, Drake stopped at Cartegena in North Columbia to collect provisions - including tobacco and potato tubers. Before returning to England he stopped at Roanoke Island, where the first English settlers had been attempting to set up a colony. The pioneers returned to England with Drake, along with the potatoes.
By 1650 potatoes were the staple food of Ireland, and they began to replace wheat as the major crop elsewhere in Europe, being used to feed both people and animals. The first mention of potatoes appearing in North America comes from Irish settlers in Londonderry, New Hampshire during 1719.
The potato was such an important food to the Irish that it is permanently associated with them today in the popular imagination, due to a single devastating event - the Irish potato famine. In the 1840s there was a major outbreak of potato blight, which swept through Europe, wiping out the potato crop in many countries. The Irish economy was so dependent on a single variety of potatoes as a staple at this time that the event led to terrible disease, death, famine, and subsequently emigration by many of the survivors to areas where there was more food. The blight marks an important, though tragic, point in Irish history.
Varieties
Potatoes come in brown, yellow, red, and purple. Their flesh may be white or colored like the skin. Small types are called fingerling or new potatoes. Some common varieties are "Burbank Russet" (large, brown skin, white-fleshed, developed by Luther Burbank), "Yellow Finn" (small, with yellow skin and flesh), and "German Butterball" (a yellow fingerling). Individual varieties may be labeled boiling, indicating that they retain some shape when boiled, or baking indicating that they only hold they shape if baked.
Food value
Potatoes have a high carbohydrate content and include protein, minerals (particularly potassium, calcium and vitamins, including vitamin C. More vitamin C is found in freshly harvested potatoes than potatoes that have been stored.
Potatoes also contain a mild toxin, solanine that is destroyed by cooking. Solanine increases with potatoes' age and exposure to light and any green areas of a potato are highest in the toxin. Solanine may cause headaches, diahrea and cramps. Green area are usually near the skin caused by exposure to light; however, these areas can be discarded or well-cooked.
A benefit of new and fingerling potatoes is that they contain less solanine, so that the nutrients under the skin need not be lost. Such potatoes are an excellent source of nutrition. Peeled, long-stored potatoes fried by fast-food establishments have less nutritional value although they still have potassium and vitamin C.
Potatoes are commonly eaten boiled then mashed and mixed with butter, cream, or other seasonings (mashed potatoes); baked whole; cut into cubes and roasted; grated formed into dumplings; and cut into long, thin pieces and fried (French-fried potatoes).
Potatoes also provide starch, flour, alcohol (when fermented), dextrin, and livestock fodder.
Cultivation
Potato plants are low-growing and have white flowers with yellow stamens. They grow best in cool, moist climates such as Maine, Idaho, Germany, Russia, Poland, and Canada, though they are widely adaptable and are grown on a small scale in most temperate regions.
The tubers are covered with buds called eyes. Common varieties of potatoes do not produce seeds; the flowers are sterile. Instead, they are propagated by planting pieces of existing tubers, cut to include at least one eye. Confusingly, these pieces are called seed potatoes.
The 1881 Household Cyclopedia adds:
Potatoes, as an article of human food, are, next to wheat, of the greatest importance in the eye of a political economist. From no other crop that can be cultivated will the public derive so much food as from this valuable esculent; and it admits of demonstration that an acre of potatoes will feed double the number of people that can be fed from an acre of wheat. Very good varieties are the Gleason, Calico, and Early Goodrich.
GROUND PREPARATION:
To reduce the ground till it is completely free from root-weeds, may be considered as a desiderutum in potato husbandry; though in many seasons these operations cannot be perfectly executed, without losing the proper time for planting, which never ought to be beyond the first of May, if circumstances do not absolutely interdict it. Three ploughings, with frequent harrowings and rollings, are necessary in most cases before the land is in suitable condition. When this is accomplished form the drills as if they were for turnips; cart the manure, which ought not to be sparingly applied, plant the seed above the manure, reverse the drills for covering it and the seed, then harrow the drills in length, which completes the preparation and seed process.
SEED QUANTITY:
It is not advantageous to cut the seed into small slips, for the strength of the stem at the outset depends in direct proportion upon the vigor and power of the seed-plant. The seed plant, therefore, ought to be large, rarely smaller than the fourth-part of the potato; and if the seed is of small size, one-half of the potato may be profitably used. At all events, rather err in giving over large seed than in making it too small because, by the first error, no great loss can ever be sustained; whereas, by the other, feeble and late crop may be the consequence. When the seed is properly cut, it requires from ten to twelve hundredweight of potatoes to plant an acre of ground, where the rows are twenty seven inches apart; but this quantity depends greatly upon the size of the potatoes used; if they are large, a greater weight may be required, but the extra quantity will be abundantly repaid by the superiority of crop which large seed usually produces.
RAISING METHODS:
The earth should be dug twelve inches deep, if the soil will allow it; after this, a hole should be opened about six inches deep, and horse-dung or long litter should be put therein, about three inches thick; this hole should not be more than twelve inches in diameter. Upon this dung or litter a potato should be planted whole, upon which a little more dung should be shaken, and then the earth should be put thereon. In like manner the whole plot of ground must be planted, taking care that the potatoes be at least sixteen inches apart. When the young shoots make their appearance they should have fresh mould drawn around them with a hoe; and if the tender shoots are covered, it will prevent the frost from injuring them; they should again be earthed when the shoots make a second appearance, but not covered, as in all probability the season will be less severe.
A plentiful supply of mould should be given them, and the person who performs this business should never tread upon the plant, or the hillock that is raised round it, as the lighter the earth is the more room the potato will have to expand.
A gentleman obtained from a single root, thus planted, very nearly forty pounds weight of large potatoes, and from almost every other root upon the same plot of ground from fifteen to twenty pounds weight; and, except the soil be stony or gravelly, ten pounds or half a peck of potatoes may generally be obtained from each root by pursuing the foregoing method.
But note--cuttings or small sets will not do for this purpose.
STORING:
Potatoes are generally dug up with a three-prong grape or fork, but at other times, when the weather is dry, the plough is used, which is the most expeditious implement. After gathering the interval, the furrow taken by the plough is broken and separated, in which way the crop may be more completely gathered than when taken up by the grape. The potatoes are then stored up for winter and spring use; and as it is of importance to keep them as long through summer as possible, every endeavor ought to be made to preserve them from frost, and from sprouting in the spring months. The former is accomplished by covering them well with straw when lodged in a house, and by a thick coat of earth when deposited in a pit, and the latter, by picking them carefully at different times, when they begin to sprout, drying them sufficiently by exposure to the sun, or by a gentle toast of a kiln.
IRELAND CULTIVATION:
The drill system, in the cultivation of potatoes in Ireland, is particularly recommended by Lord Farnham, in a letter to Sir John Sinclair. The small farmers and laborers plant them in lazy-beds, eight feet wide. This mode is practised on account of the want of necessary implements for practicing the drill system, together with a want of horses for the same purpose.
They are cut into sets, three from a large potato; and each set to contain at least one eye. The sets are planted at the distance of seven inches asunder, six and a quarter cwt. are considered sufficient seed for an English acre. Lord Farnham recommends rotten dung in preference to any fresh dung. If not to be procured, horse-dung, hot from the dunghill. In any soil he would recommend the dung below the seed.
When the potatoes are vegetated ten inches above the surface, the scuffler must be introduced, and cast the mold from the potato. If any weeds are found in the drills they must be hand-hoed; in three days afterwards they must be moulded up by the double-breasted plough, as high as the neck of the potato. This mode must be practiced twice, or in some cases three times, particularly if the land is foul. I do not (says Lord Farnham) consider any mode so good as the drill system.
GENERAL OBSERVATION:
To prepare for the drill system either oat or wheat stubble, it should be ploughed in October or the beginning of November; to be ploughed deep and laid up for winter dry. In March let it be harrowed, and give it three clean earths. Be very particular to eradicate the couch grass. The drills to be three feet asunder; drill deep the first time that there is room in the bottom of the furrow to contain the dung. The best time to begin planting the potatoes is about the latter end of April by this system. It is as good a preparation for wheat as the best fallows.
Three feet and a half for drills are preferable to four feet. Mr. Curwen prefers four feet and a half. He says the produce is immense. Potatoes ought to be cut at least from two to three weeks before being planted; and if planted very early whole potatoes are preferable to cut ones, and dung under and over. Some agriculturists lately pay much attention to raising seedling potatoes, with the hope of renewing the vigor of the plant.
Early potatoes may be produced in great quantity by resetting the plants, after taking off the ripe and large ones. A gentleman at Dumfries has replanted them six different times in one season, without any additional manure; and, instead of falling off in quantity, he gets a larger crop of ripe ones at every raising than the former ones. His plants have still on them three distinct crops, and he supposes they may still continue to vegetate and germinate until they are stopped by the frost. By this means he has a new crop every eight days, and has had so for a length of time.
- Reference for potato history - The Vegetable Ingredients Cookbook - Christine Ingram, Lorenz Books, 1996
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