Green Potatoes? Summer Week #18 – 10/2/24
Green Spotted Potatoes?
Hello folks!
Well the sun and wind has finally done its thing, and we are back to harvesting potatoes again. Woohoo!
Our potato yields this year aren’t great. Remember all that rain we had early on in the season? The potatoes did not like that. At all. We can tell because the lenticels on the potatoes are enlarged, something they do when exposed to wet conditions. Essentially the potato is trying to respire and builds extra large lenticels to try to get the air they need. On the skin of the potato this looks like tannish spots. So… not our best yielding year, but there are still literal tons coming out of the fields.
The gold potatoes that are coming out are showing lots of green spots. The green spots develop when the potatoes are exposed to sunshine – in this case the sunlight penetrates the soil and the lighter skinned potatoes start to green. Fun fact, the green is actually chlorophyll! Chlorophyll by itself is not harmful to consume. However, the production of chlorophyll can also indicate the production of solanine, something our bodies do not appreciate.
So rule of thumb, peel off any green spots on a potato and you should be good to go!
As we are washing and sorting potatoes we are going to pull potatoes that have greater than 25% of the skin as green. (We will sell these as seconds later). We WILL be bagging up potatoes for you that have low levels of green spotting, because we are finding that a quarter of our gold potatoes have some green spotting and we just don’t believe in wasting potatoes that are perfectly good and safe to eat once they are peeled.
So remember, peel the green spots and you are good to go!
Farmer Cassie
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Here’s a more scientific explanation regarding greening potatoes from the USDA:
According to the University of Idaho Cooperative Extension Service, “Potato tubers are specialized stems of a potato plant, and tubers that are exposed to light, will naturally turn green. The green is nothing more than chlorophyll, a harmless compound found in all green plants.
However, when potato tubers turn green there is usually an increase in a glycoalkoloid compound called solanine. Consequently, it is important to store potatoes in the absence of light to prevent greening. Tubers with a high concentration of solanine will taste bitter, and can be harmful if eaten in large quantities. To be safe, it is best to not eat the green part of tubers.” You do not need to discard green potatoes. Just peel the skins, shoots and any green color; that is where the solanines concentrate.
The United States Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service inspects only meat, poultry and egg products. The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) inspects other foods. For more information you may call the FDA toll-free at 888-723-3366 or go to FDA’s website.
