Jim and Megan Gerritsen of Wood Prairie Farm in Bridgewater, Maine, grow l6 varieties of organic potatoes, which they sell mail-order for both seed and for tablestock. Many of their varieties are unusual ones, including several heirloom varieties.

The Gerritsens have chosen their varieties with care. “We’ve grown over a hundred varieties,” Jim Gerritsen pointed out. “We try to identify varieties which have both culinary excellence and good production. We believe our current varieties are the best of those hundred we’ve trialed, from a culinary standpoint and a production standpoint, in addition to filling niches for particular uses.”
Many of the Gerritsens’ varieties have interesting stories. Jim passes on those stories to his market garden customers, who find that the stories help in selling the potatoes.

“People are interested in knowing more about the food they eat,” Gerritsen said. “The stories can become a part of family tradition. We also try to educate our customers on the best uses for each variety, and if a customer has a special use in mind, we’ll tell them which variety will be best for that use.”
Carola, a yellow fleshed potato, originated in Germany. “When we started selling our tablestock by mail-order,” Jim said, “our customers of German and Dutch origin went right to the Yukon Golds, a more common yellow fleshed potato.

“But when we started growing Carola, these customers all switched to it. ‘Carola is more like the varieties in the old country,’ they told me. We have found we have a real following for Carola.
“To my subjective taste buds, I think Carola is every bit as good as Yukon Gold. It’s an extremely good tasting potato. But the moisture, specific gravity, and texture of the two varieties are very different. Yukons are a high gravity potato that makes a fluffy mashed potato.

“Carola is more moist, and holds its shape well as a baking potato. But Carola breaks down and dissolves when you boil it. Carola can turn a thin soup into a thick, creamy one.” Carola was one of several yellow fleshed varieties that the Gerritsens sent to Martha Stewart’s chef, at his request. The chef had never tried this variety before. He asked for some more Carolas for a taping, and reported back that they’d cooked up beautifully, and Martha loved them.

Cranberry Red is an unusual heirloom variety that, in addition to a red skin, also has a pink flesh. This potato is sometimes also called All Red.

Both Cranberry Red and Rose Finn Apple, another heirloom variety, are still available today because they were maintained in a collection of heirloom potatoes in Missouri by folks interested in preserving old varieties.

However, the collection eventually got in trouble, according to Chuck Brown, a USDA potato breeder in Prosser, Washington. “The potatoes had developed a lot of virus problems, resulting in unthrifty plants and small tubers,” he explained. “The collectors realized,” continued Brown, “that their varieties could be lost because of the virus problems.” Fortunately, Gene Kahn, CEO of Cascadian Farms, who has quite an interest in heirloom potatoes, sent seven of the best varieties in the collection to Chuck Brown, who didn’t want to see the varieties lost. “I cleaned up the virus,” continued Brown, “by doing tissue cultures, which I exposed to 90 degree heat treatment for about three weeks. In a very hot environment, the viruses don’t multiply. “Then with a scalpel, I dissected out the growing tips and recultured these.” Eventually, after 5 or 6 tries, Brown succeeded in getting virus-free material. “They had grown very poorly before,” Brown pointed out, “but without the viruses it was like they had a new lease on life. Now they had dark green leaves, and grew vigorously.” Brown heard about the Gerritsens and contacted them. They were interested in trying the varieties. So Brown supplied tissue culture to Maine’s Porter Farm, one of only three university-based tissue culture facilities in the country. Porter Farm multiplied the seed.

“It’s gratifying that there are people around like Chuck Brown,” commented Gerritsen, “and my hat’s off to him.” Swedish Peanut Fingerling also has an interesting history. “This variety was brought to Alaska by Swedish Settlers in l9l0-l5, and was called Mandelpotatis,” related Gerritsen. “I received seed for Swedish Peanut Fingerling from a friend, Bill Campbell, who runs the seed certification program for Alaska.”

This potato fills an interesting niche. Whereas most fingerlings tend to be moist, with a low specific gravity, “this one is dry and mealy,” noted Gerritsen. “Baked, they taste incredibly good, with a dry and flaky texture. You can eat them like a finger food.”

Another plus for this variety is that they grow very uniform in size, with an average length of 3 inches.
The variety Rose Gold, a red-skinned, yellow fleshed potato, was developed by the University of Guelph in the early l980s, along with a half-sister with a brighter skin color, Red Gold.

The Gerritsens could have offered both to their customers. “We figure, though,” said Gerritsen, “that our role is to try to help smaller growers through the maze, and help them figure out which of the many varieties to grow, so we offer only the best variety in a given niche, in this case red skinned, yellow fleshed varieties.

“Smaller growers don’t have the time to do variety trials to figure out which would be the best to grow. We offer only Rose Gold. We believe it is superior in eating quality.” (It is one of the Gerritsen family’s personal favorites.) Rose Gold is also superior from a production standpoint, because its sister, Red Gold, is considered more susceptible to scab, and sets fewer tubers.

It’s interesting to note that, according to the National Potato Board’s summary of all the U.S. seed certification programs, the Gerritsens are the only certified seed growers growing Rose Gold.
But this is a variety for the smaller grower. A couple of years ago, a Colorado grower with 6,000 acres of yellow potatoes called Gerritsen about Rose Gold. “I wouldn’t recommend it to him,” Gerritsen explained. “It’s a pretty tender variety. If a grower is in a hurry to get thousands of acres harvested, Rose Gold could get pretty bruised up by the air harvesters and the bulk body trucks.” Caribe is another Canadian variety that the Gerritsens offer, a purple skinned, white fleshed potato. “Caribe is one of the earliest varieties we grow, and also one of the highest yielding. It has snow white flesh and a wonderful texture,” commented Gerritsen.

For a late, round white potato, the Gerritsens offer Elba, which was bred at Cornell. “Elba has excellent culinary qualities,” noted Gerritsen, “an excellent resistance to scab, and a high number of tubers per hill. It’s one of the highest yielding varieties we grow, and also one of the better tasting white varieties. (In general, yellow-fleshed varieties are better tasting than the average white fleshed varieties,” he noted.)
For a russet potato to offer their customers, the Gerritsens chose Butte, which Gerritsen calls, “the best russet there is.” Butte was bred in Idaho in the mid l970’s, and is “an outstanding variety. Also a nutritional comparison showed it had 20% higher protein and 50% more vitamin C than Russet Burbanks.” Gerritsen says, “If I would be marooned on a desert island and given one variety to grow, it would be Butte. It’s also one of the most trouble-free varieties to grow. The bugs just don’t seem to pay any attention to it. “Butte is also cheaper to grow. “It sets a lot of tubers, so it takes only half the seed per acre of, say, Yukon Gold. It makes a light, fluffy mashed or baked potato, but it is a little more bland than Yukons.” Red Cloud is another interesting variety the Gerritsens offer. “It was bred in Nebraska, and named after the Sioux warrior chief,” Gerritsen remarked. “What makes Red Cloud unusual is that, although most red skinned, white fleshed potatoes are moist, Red Cloud is dry. “This is the driest red there is,” continued Gerritsen. “It has good taste, bright red color, and incredible dormancy, which makes it great for the organic grower who wants to market tablestock late in the season. “To get it to ‘wake up’ in the spring, it’s the first variety we put in the heat room, right next to the stove. Even with greensprouting, it’s our last variety to emerge. But it’s a mid-season variety, so it does eventually catch up.”

Island Sunshine is a very bright yellow-fleshed variety that “makes Yukons look off-white,” commented Gerritsen. “It’s a good tasting, dry variety with a very low glycoalkaloid level.” Island Sunshine was bred about 20 years ago by two brothers who emigrated from Holland and settled on Prince Edward Island. “They were organic growers who were ‘hobby breeders,’ who’ve been making 5,000 crosses a year for 40 years,” according to Gerritsen. “Island Sunshine is their best variety,” he continued, “and it also happens to have the highest tolerance to late blight of any variety identified. It has a high tolerance in the foliage, and an extremely high tolerance in the tubers. I’ve seen it take some late blight in the foliage, but I’ve never seen any late blight on the tubers.”

The Gerritsens aim for the general run of their seed potatoes to be small, because this is an advantage for the growers who buy them. “If you buy two 100-pound bags of seed potatoes, one with large potatoes, and the other with smaller ones, you’ll plant more row feet with the smaller tubers, because you’ll have more eyes,” Gerritsen explained. “So smaller seed potatoes are a better value for our customers.
“Some of our fingerling varieties might have l2 eyes, for example. We think you can’t have too much set.”

The Gerritsens take extraordinary care in the production of their seed potatoes. They “tuber unit plant,” which means that they cut their seed as it is planted, on knives mounted on their modified Iron Age planter. “We have l,000-foot rows,” said Gerritsen, “and after every 250 feet of row that we plant, we stop and disinfect the knives with chlorine bleach, which is an approved general disinfectant for organic farms.”