Staff Writer
BRIDGEWATER – Wood Prairie Farm’s new Organic Prairie Blush Potato has received the coveted Green Thumb Award from the Mailorder Gardening Association as one of the top six plant introductions of 2009.
Contributed photo
Jim Gerritsen, who with his family owns and operates the organic Wood Prairie Farm in Bridgewater, recently traveled to Baltimore where he was presented the Green Thumb Award from the Mailorder Gardening Association (MGA). Wood Prairie Farm’s new Organic Prairie Blush Potato was named one of the top six plant introductions of 2009. Here, Gerritsen accepts the award from Barbara Emerson, president of the MGA.
Jim Gerritsen, who with his family owns and operates the organic Wood Prairie Farm in Bridgewater, recently traveled to Baltimore where he was presented the award at the MGA’s Winter Convention.
“Every year the competition for a Green Thumb Award is pretty intense especially from the ornamentals sector,” said Gerritsen. “As an organic seed potato farmer, it’s great to see the resurgence of interest in home vegetable gardening and in healthy vegetables like Prairie Blush.”
An early mid-season, golden-fleshed potato variety noted for its exceptional flavor and texture, Prairie Blush, Gerritsen said, has beautiful blush skin markings, excellent storage qualities and very good suitability to organic culture. Seven subsequent years of field trialing under certified organic conditions have revealed that Prairie Blush plants are robust, vigorous, upright and fast growing; and sport light purple blossoms. Prairie Blush exhibits good tuber set and fine yields of tubers that are round-to-slightly oblong, bright, smooth, shallow-eyed and display excellent resistance to sprouting in storage.
Prairie Blush is a “one-in-a-million” chance discovery of a clonal variant – a pink blushing tuber from a single hill in a field of Yukon Gold potatoes on Wood Prairie Farm back in 2001.
“We had grown Yukon Gold the summer before,” said Gerritsen, who grades every potato grown on the farm. “Every potato goes past my eyes, and I saw one tuber come across the grading line that had this beautiful, pink blush that covered about one-third or half of its skin area. It was a beautiful potato, so I set it aside and said, ‘I’m going to plant that out next spring and see if it’s genetically stable.’ We did that, and the following fall, every tuber in that hill was similarly beautiful with a pink blush.
“The blush varies anywhere from a quarter of the skin cover up to 50 percent … sometimes a little bit more,” he said. “Every tuber is a little bit different, but they were all distinctive and clearly members of the same family. We took a small amount and cooked them and they were really good, but to our taste buds, they tasted like they were more moist than a Yukon Gold.”
Gerritsen went to Presque Isle and met with potato breeder Zenaida Ganga of the Aroostook Research Farm.
“We asked if she could do a specific gravity test on the potato because we thought it was not only visually different, but more moist,” said Gerritsen. “We brought some Yukon Golds grown from the same seedlot and some of the Prairie Blush, and she did a test on them and, indeed, there was a significant difference in the two. It truly is a mutation … these things happen in nature, and I’m just grateful that as it rolled over on the table that the pink was up and I had noticed it. In this case, it was nature that did the breeding, not me.”
Neither a red-skinned nor a golden-skinned variety, Prairie Blush fills the unique niche of a bi-color potato. Lab tests confirm that Prairie Blush has a desirable and distinctive moist texture when compared to Yukon Gold. Additionally, Prairie Blush possesses a unique blending of amylose and amylopectin starches, which give the tubers a reliably firm texture, making them ideally suited to roasting, frying or boiling. The potato will appeal to both the kitchen gardener and the market gardener with its delectable golden flesh and rare beauty, exceptional old-time potato flavor and ease of organic growing.
Prairie Blush went on the market last fall, and Gerritsen said customers are definitely interested.
“Because of its beauty and its great taste, we think there’s going to be a great interest in it,” he said. “We just mailed our catalog out about six weeks ago, and the orders are coming in. What delighted us the most is that it’s got a really good taste and texture. It’s going to be an exceptionally good cooking potato. Sales have been good, but we think that the publicity that’s associated with winning a Green Thumb Award will boost sales.
“Two years ago we received a Green Thumb Award for a Cornell University variety we had been working with – the King Harry – and we’ve never had so much publicity as with that potato,” said Gerritsen. “The phone was ringing off the hook, and it’s actually been hard for us to grow enough of these to meet the demands that our customers are giving us.”
This is the fourth Green Thumb Award Wood Prairie Farm has received.
“We’ve won with two potato varieties – King Harry and now the Prairie Blush – and before that we put together two kits, the Organic Potato Blossom Festival and the Complete Organic Potato Patch Kits,” said Gerritsen. “I’m really pleased to see so much attention now being given to vegetables and vegetable gardening.
“Last year was our best year for seed sales; our sales jumped 15 percent. Historically, when economic times get hard, people look to their gardens and the entire garden industry saw a big surge of orders,” he said. “We’re expecting to have another good year this year because what we’re raising and selling – seed potatoes – are all things that people are wanting to grow. The more people grow and eat vegetables, the healthier they’re going to be, the lower our health care costs are going to be, and gardening as a family can be a very fulfilling activity.”
Prairie Blush Double-Certified Organic Seed Potatoes are available exclusively from Wood Prairie Farm. The two and-a-half pound bag sells for $11.95. For more information, call 1-800-829-9765 or log onto www.woodprairie.com.
