Are Green Potatoes Toxic?

Yes, according to Snopes, and many other sources.

The green is from chlorophyll, which is not the dangerous part, but is present along with the toxin: solanine. Large amounts of solanine consumed at one time can cause nerve damage, and smaller amounts consumed regularly can be carcinogenic.

Potato greens (leaves, stems) should never be eaten, and if you find any green on your spuds, it should be cut away, or the entire potato discarded. I found this one in my garden (see picture), and tossed it into the compost heap.



Plant Avenue Home

Potato Growing Tips

My potato crop was a little light this year, so I thought I'd give myself a potato growing refresher:

• Rotate planting location on a 3 year cycle (you need 3 sites if you want to plant potatoes every year).
• Allow your seed potatoes to sprout ("chitting") by keeping them in a warm, dry and dark place for a few days, before planting.
• Cut seed potatoes into small pieces, ensuring that each piece has at least one eye (sprout).
  
• Plant as soon as the soil can be worked, but warmer than 45F/8C.
• Plant in loose soil, not too damp (good drainage), slightly acidic.
• Potatoes like full sun.
• Plant 3 inches deep and 12 inches apart.
• Water early in the day so that the leaves have time to dry before the evening (if the plants stay wet they can be subject to rot).
• Once plants have flowered and the blossoms have died, that's a sign that there are potatoes ready to harvest. Simply dig through the soil with your hands until you find them.
• FYI - potato greens are highly toxic, and should never be eaten. The same is true of green potato skin. If you dig up some spuds that are still partially green, either cut away all the green before you eat them, or dispose of them.

Upon reviewing the above, I think what I can do next year to improve my harvest is to change my planting location. I have a very sunny spot that would be perfect! At the moment I have cucumbers and zucchini growing there, but our family eats far more potatoes. Next year that will be my new potato spot :)

Brussel Sprouts Info

This is a new crop for me: Brussel sprouts. I planted them for the first time this spring, and the plants have thrived.

Thrived, but... no sprouts! While so many other veggies in my garden have found their way to my kitchen by now, the Brussel sprouts still haven't made their appearance. Then I thought, what if they're biennial?

It turns out that they're a relatively hardy, cold weather plant, and a frost or two actually improves their flavour. They may not produce sprouts until very late in the year, sometimes waiting until the beginning of the following year.

I planted mine from seeds in the garden in late May, which means I won't see any sprouts until early 2010.

I'm glad I researched this, or I may have pulled the plants and discarded them, thinking that they had failed. Now I know they're doing fine, but not quite ready yet :)

Ripening Tomatoes

Tomatoes taste best when they're ripened on the vine, but sometimes there isn't time before the first frost in the fall. This happened to me last year - we had such a short growing season that most of my cherry tomatoes were still dark green when the temperatures started to drop.

I googled the topic and discovered that you can ripen green tomatoes by bringing them indoors and placing them in the dark, somewhere cool. I thought I'd try, and took a large plastic container, lined it with paper towels, and spread out the tomatoes. I then covered them to keep the light out and waited, checking on them every couple of days.

Voila! Success. I discovered something interesting, too... if I took out ALL the ripened tomatoes, it took longer for new ones to ripen than it did if I left a few ripe ones in the tub. It turns out that ripe tomatoes produce Ethylene, which accelerates the ripening process for the others. Supposedly ripe bananas have the same effect on green tomatoes, although I haven't tried that one.

Here are some other tricks to speed up the tomato ripening process (these ones I haven't tried yet):

• shock the plant by yanking on the root
• cut back on watering
• pull the entire plant and hang it upside down

This year we're having a much warmer summer so I've been letting my tomatoes ripen on the vine, but it's nice to have some tricks up my sleeve for the future :)