Speaking of Purple Potatoes

[so lucky]

I saw on that silly doctor show the other day that purple potatoes were higher in nutrients than white or other colored ones. Has anyone had good luck growing purple spuds?
I am rather amazed at the prices for seed potatoes (and for the price of sweet potato plants, and garlic). I remember not too many years ago selling whole 50 lb bags of Kennebecs for ...maybe $25.00?
I will probably balk at the price of any purple seed potatoes I find. But I may try a few, regardless. I know, prices have gone up on everything, and I'm just sounding like an old fuddy-duddy.

 

[Hal]

Purple are mostly higher in antioxidants, that would be the main difference from yellow and white fleshed potatoes.

For this year if I was you I'd track down whatever purple potato cultivars you wish to try and grow them out and then make your choice and then keep some tubers from the healthiest plants.
If you keep your plants clean and practice good crop rotation there is nothing to stop you saving your own seed potatoes rather than being in a mad rush to buy them every year before they sell out. You can also save some true seed off your plants but it won't come true to type but will make for some interesting growing and might allow you to select something more suited to your conditions.

I'm a sucker for Purple Congo personally.

 

[TheSeedObsesser]

I have grown purple potatoes before, I've only tried "All Blue" but they're as easy to grow as other potatoes; just a different color. (I don't know if "All Blue" would be considered purple, I thought that they were the same thing talking about potatoes.)

True potato seed is great fun! The coolest looking one that I've gotten was a spud with purplish skin and a pink-blue mottled interior, fingerling. I've also had one with yellow flesh and red skin with pinkish eyes, standard potato shape. Using a hybrid like yukon gold will increase the diversity of colors and shapes that you get from true seed grown potatoes. If you find a true seed grown potato that you like just save the tubers for next year and - WHAMO! You've got your own unique variety of potato.

 

[Smart Red]

I have grown ALL-BLUE and ALL-RED varieties, never a purple. Both produced about as many and the same sized spuds as my Yukon Gold. (Maybe a tad smaller) They both had more baby-balls at harvest time, but I figured that in a longer growing season, those too would have grown.

That was the first year I'd ever had seed pods on my potatoes. Never knew that could happen until I started growing some of the heirloom varieties.

 

[Chickie'sMomaInNH]

i got Magic Molly this year so i will be finding out how well they will grow and taste. i didn't care for the taste of the All Blue's i grew this year. dh used them in a stew and i thought they were bland.

the closest i get to anything purple is my Purple Vikings which are purple skinned and taste nice when used for mashed potatoes.

 

[catjac1975]

I have grown the purple from leftovers that I had bought to eat. They grew fine. I just prefer to cook large potatoes and most of the colored potatoes are small. All that peeling of small potatoes is a pain. I do often leave the skins on, though.

 

[digitS']

I have grown Purple Majesty with good success. It wasn't hugely productive but did well and the tubers kept well and tasted good. I'm not a big fan of purple food, however . . . seems strange altho' I can handle "red" cabbage okay. You see, the inner part of the leaf when you shred it is green not purple .

Purple Peruvian may have been what you were growing, Cat'. I had them one year and made a pretty bad mistake with them. I think there was only 2 plants but I dug them with the early potatoes. They really should have had the entire growing season. It was easy to see that I'd messed up but the plants had lots of fingerlings under them.

Both of these were difficult to find in the soil. I dig out the entire bed when harvesting spuds. I'm careful - & thorough. Still, I found myself standing on the dang purple spuds more than once! I also completely missed a few and had volunteers later .

Steve

 

[Jared77]

I did Adirondack blues one year. They got HUGE like sweet potatoes. They didn't produce a lot but what I got was BIG! They tasted fine, held their color well for cooking. I wanted to see how they stored but didn't try with such bug spuds I didn't think I'd get an accurate example of how they hold up.

I haven't grown them since but I might try another variety like them again if I can get a few locally.

 

[Wishin']

I was going to ask the other day if anyone grows purple potatoes. I've always wanted to, but don't have the space to experiment

 

[Jared77]

I planted mine along side my regular potatoes. The nursery where I got my seed potatoes from sold me 4 purple seed potatoes so was all I had to work with. They sold that variety in 4 seed packs