Seed potatoes and onion starts

it's okay to make plans

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Now, more than ever, is a great time to contribute to my ongoing For Trans Families, With Love anthology. It’s open for submissions, and I’m waiting for your art, your words, and your voice to be part of it. Please share this widely so that anyone who wants to participate can find the link.

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No, it looks absolutely nothing like this right now. But isn’t that why we keep pictures around? And yes, those are potatoes growing on the entire right side of that image.

There is a script to be followed at this time of the year. Sometimes I check my records from seasons past to make sure my timing is good. This is why I keep those records. When did I start tomato seeds last year? Were my pepper starts leggy by the time it was warm enough to transplant them out? Did I remember to fertilize my garden beds before I covered them for a long slumber through the Persephone months? And when did I order onion sets and seed potatoes?

If you’re not “in the know,” there are a few tricks some of us outdoor foodies like to employ year to year. Yes, you can (and I do) grow onions from seed, but there’s this whole calendar of frost dates and winter temperatures to fuss around with, and it’s difficult to know if your starts will be the right size or strength come spring. Onions, in particular, are a longer season crop than most people realize. The big bulb onions you buy in the store are often started the winter prior to their summer harvest, and then the bulbs are stored for a long, long time. I want the payoff of onion rings on the grill with my late summer burger, and so I buy starts from a grower in Texas¹. No, they don’t get any money from me mentioning them here, but yes, you should definitely buy from them. They’re a family farm, and their starts are the best I’ve ever bought. I’m loyal.

A few years back I found the most amazing seed potato company. They were incredibly sterile in their propagation process (there’s this whole story of the Irish potato famine you should read up on if you want to know why clean potato propagation is important), they offered a huge selection of varieties, and their shipping rates were quite reasonable.

Yeah, they ended their business the next year. Eff.

Elbe potatoes grow pretty remarkably large. They make stellar mashed potatoes and hash browns. Lift with the knees.

I went on the scout for other providers of my dearly beloved spuds, and we ordered from several companies, usually paying way too much in shipping, sometimes getting poor performers, often feeling stuck with maybe one available variety of fingerlings.

Listen, if you haven’t been eating fingerling potatoes, you aren’t living to your fullest potential as a human. Please trust me on this. But if you buy them at the store, you pay dearly. Farmers market? The cost is even worse. And I’m a huge supporter of farmers markets, but price gouging is still a real thing. And they get away with it because those spuds Taste So Dang Good.

Russian Banana and Ama Rosa fingerling potatoes harvested and brought in for dinner. Nom nom.

Enter stage left: a new potato grower who probably isn’t that new, but the world is big and so is the internet, and thank goodness my wife saw them mentioned by someone in a group somewhere and said, “Hey, this farm grows garlic. And maybe seed potatoes? And I think they’re even in-state!”²

Let’s get real—this is what love looks like in a marriage. It’s not about dinners out without the kids or sneaky deliveries of flowers or a cheesy card on the anniversary we BOTH forget almost every year, it’s the super real stuff of fulfilling one another’s needs for vital resources like seeds and rhubarb crowns and a couple leftover, overgrown zucchini starts the neighbor put out at the end of their driveway one spring that she brought home in her pockets from a dog walk.

So when I get those baby chicks and she’s pissed at me for adding “one more thing” we have to take care of, maybe help me remind her how much she adores me?

Do you know just how sweet and lovely potato blossoms smell?

Returning to the potatoes and onions, this is your helpful reminder to get those orders in ASAP if you want to grow this stuff in your garden this year.

But Robin, the world is kinda on fire, and civilization is collapsing, and I’m worried about the economy, and did you say chicks? Cuz that means you’ll have eggs, so what’s your address?

Check. I got you.

Onion starts may not look like much when you plant them, but they will grow mighty and sweet and make your burgers weep with joy.

Today probably feels awful. If you happen to be one of the lucky people in twenty years looking back through the archive of “weird stuff you can find on the interwebs,” and you just stumbled across this post on some random subreddit (if that even still exists), first off, please tell me how it all ends, cuz I’m on pins and needles over here. Second, for reference, the US just let a convicted felon take office 10 days ago, and he’s throwing a power-stoked rage-fest of signing executive orders invalidating immigrants, trans people, government employees, and the military all while the majority of the world either laughs directly in our face (like the Danes telling our pres to literally fuck off) or rubs its hands greedily at the rapid destabilization of an enormous, super-rich country ripe for the picking.

So yeah, planting a garden might feel a little… silly?

And it is. This is how I play. It’s my version of Lego or video games. It’s where I stretch and dig and throw dirt and stare at baby ladybugs. It’s a place and a series of activities that make me feel connected to this space, to the soil and the weeds and the trees, to the worms and the fungi in the wood chipped paths.

It’s okay to play. It’s okay to plan for the future. It’s okay to plant a potato (just not right now since the ground is pretty much solidly frozen). It’s okay to order seeds and starts. It’s okay to dream.

And if you need a break from all of the things happening out there, you’re welcome to come walk through the winter garden with me. There isn’t much happening above ground this time of year, but it’s peaceful and beautiful, and you can run the hazelnut catkins through your fingers. There are frozen leftover raspberries you can step on that make a satisfying crunch under your shoe. There are dreams in the soil that even I haven’t seen yet, and I’ll share all of them with you.

It is really not okay right now. But I still like to grow and eat potatoes and onions, so I’m ordering them and making a plan for where they will be planted.

Fingerling potatoes nestled sleepily in their cool summer beds during harvest. Off camera you cannot see my bare toes wiggling gleefully in the soil as I sunbathe and collect the harvest that will feed us through the winter.

Your trans friend,

Robin

1. Dixondale Farms in Texas is family owned and operated, and they are truly lovely people to buy from.

2. Filaree Farm is another lovely family farm in Washington with a better selection of garlic than you’re likely to find anywhere else. They also sell great spuds.