Today I harvested the potatoes and onions. I use a pitchfork and I can tell

when potatoes are ready to harvest for they seem to push the tubers
protruding
out of the ground, so dense underneath with tubers.

And I was wondering about something. I know dogs and cats and birds like
to get dusted and dirtied as to keep parasites off their skins and hides.
So I was
wondering if dirty potatoes store better than clean washed potatoes?

Last year I cleaned and washed all the tomatoes and potatoes and stored
them
on plastic flats and most all of the tomatoes developed a black spot where
the
tomato was in contact with the plastic surface. And most of them spoiled.

This year I have racks of metal gratings so the tomatoes and potatoes rest
on metal gratings with plenty of air circulation. So far none of my
tomatoes
have spoiled and I expect fresh ripe tomatoes into December.

My onion harvest was pitifully small this year. Due to lack of diligence on

my part because onions grow so well and easily that I forgot about them and

did not weed them enough nor water them. So have to improve the onion
patch next year. I probably will have to buy organic onions from the store
to get me through the winter.

I started a thread this year about potatoes being the underground tomato
and that the two species are of the same family because the potato was a
mutation of the tomato some millions of years ago. The leaves look the same

and they came from the same continent indigenous. They even have about the
same *productive capacity*. A full grown potato plant has about as many
tubers as a full grown tomato plant has fruit.

I would hazard to guess that some million years ago the tomato plant had
a *mutation* in South America wherein the tomato was buried and instead of
seeds in a fruit that the seeds mutated into tubers. Or possibly the other
way
around that the potato came first and the tomato was a mutation of the
potato.

Anyway, my conjecture sparked off a big debate in sci.bio.botany that
tomato
was not even in the same family as potato with about half of the
respondents favoring the same family and the other half not.

Question: does a potato have all the essential nutrients that a human can
live on
potatoes alone? If my memory is correct, a potato is like rice in that one
can almost live on those 2 staples without any other nourishment for a
considerable
length of time. If that is true, I suspect it is not true for the tomato.

Archimedes Plutonium,

_.--- Archimedes Plutonium spoke in sci.bio.botany --------._
sniped insanity
Question: does a potato have all the essential nutrients that a human can
live on
potatoes alone? If my memory is correct, a potato is like rice in that one
can almost live on those 2 staples without any other nourishment for a
considerable
length of time.

I had heard a number of years ago that potatoes (raw /with/ the
skins) and a glass of milk would keep you alive for a life time[0].
Some googleing says:
Potatoes might alone might last a person about 3 years. Sweet
potatoes are more nutritious than white potatoes. It takes 24
gallons of water to get one pound of potatoes. Most of the vitamin C
is right under the skin and boiling them doesn't mess that up if boiled
whole but the larger the chunks the better you are. Don't eat green
potato skin (if anyone is not aware of that by now: they are probably
dead already). Potatoes have no fat. The Irish lived almost
exclusively off of them. They are almost 60% carbs and 10% protein.

And most importantly you can not live off vodka but you can't live
without it.

You know a Google search was comprehensive when you find a zetatalk
link. =(

I suspect it is not true for the tomato.

Potatoes are related to deadly night shade and tobacco. Not to
tomatoes. And you can't live on potatoes.

'---...____ Faux_Pseudo ________________...---~~~


[0] You get what anyone gets. You get a life time. -- Death

--
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In article , NOdtgEMAIL wrote:
Today I harvested the potatoes and onions. I use a pitchfork and I can tell

when potatoes are ready to harvest for they seem to push the tubers
protruding
out of the ground, so dense underneath with tubers.

And I was wondering about something. I know dogs and cats and birds like
to get dusted and dirtied as to keep parasites off their skins and hides.
So I was
wondering if dirty potatoes store better than clean washed potatoes?

As a general principle washed spuds go off *much* quicker than
unwashed. This is certainly true of retail lines, but perhaps home
washing is not so bad.

Not sure why this is so. Probably something to do with both skin
damage during washing and spreading of disease spores during the
process. I gather that washing commercial eggs is forbidden in some
places for the latter reason too. (But in that case I believe it's
the probability of spreading nasties such as Salmonella through the
batch that is the cause for concern.)

[Snipped rest.]


Cheers, Phred.

--
LID