Last fall we had a local lawn care company drop off a couple of truck loads of leaves. Most of them either got composted or mixed into the new beds we were building, but a big pile stayed right where it was all winter - over the sight where we had grown potatoes last year.

This spring, as we were preparing things for planting, I noticed a volunteer potato plant sprouting where we had apparently left a potato in the ground last year - coming up through a foot of leaves. It was in a convenient place to not have to rework the already planned beds, so we left it.

It turned out to be a hugh plant! We watched it all summer, waiting for it to be ready. Here's the harvest from that single plant. The potatoes taste wonderful.

Isn't it fun to get nice surpises like that? And edible too! Looks like a decent amount off one hill.

Wow, nice gift to discover! Some of them are huge.
Were they all found in the leaf litter
or did you dig them from the soil under the leaves?

They were all in the soil below the leaves. The leaf pile around the plant sank into the ground all summer. I guess the potato that we missed in last year's harvest was down pretty deep. I left it pretty much untouched the way I found it in the spring.

They're not just from one hill, they're from one plant.

We expected them to be hollow and woody in the middles, but they were soft and meaty all the way through.

I didn't write down the variety from last season, but they were from red starters that we picked up at Longacres.

This year's reds were Red Gold and they produced potatoes almost the same size.

Our late variety of potatoes this year is just now ready to dig up. I looked back in my book and noticed that I never wrote down what variety they were. Maybe I still have the Fedco receipt.

We also put Kennebec in this year. They performed very well with an even higher yield than the reds. We'll see what's in the ground from the last bunch tomorrow.

Thanks for all the info!
I've often wondered about those spuds from Longacres.
I've only grown Kennebec, bought them from Fedco
many years ago and haven't grown potatoes since i moved from pinneohill(had a nice north facing garden on a granite ledge for 21 yrs, LOL) .

Well Franeli, tomorrow's here, and it's raining so much that we're going to leave the last crop of potatoes in the ground until next weekend. But I've got one more batch of pasta sauce to make from the last significant picking of tomatoes today and then it's time to start pickling beets.

Still waiting for my Excalibur dehydrator to show up so I can dry the basil, sage, marjoram, and peppers and some of these great tomatoes.