New potatoes are absolutely delicious, quick to grow, and early to harvest.
They are incredibly tender, with delicate thin skins.
These potatoes are ideal for roasting and eating whole, making them far easier to prepare than their larger, mature siblings.
While we all know that a mature potato is harvested after the plant dies back, it can be harder to figure out when to harvest a new potato.
When to Harvest New Potatoes
New potatoes are quite small, roughly the size of a chicken egg.
Some may be smaller and some may be larger; it all depends on how large the plant is, how rich the soil is, and how much sunlight the plant was exposed to.
Here are a few tricks for figuring out when to harvest new potatoes at precisely the right time!
Easiest & Accurate: Finding Harvest Dates for Your Potato Varieties
Each variety of potato has a set number of growing days before potatoes are ready to harvest.
They may be windows of up to three weeks in width for mature potatoes, while the harvest time for new potatoes is generally a far shorter window.
When planting potatoes, save all of the packaging for future reference, and mark your calendar for applicable harvest dates.
These dates are based on aggregated data, so try to aim for the middle of the of the time frame; this will be the best time to harvest your plants, as long as they have grown well over the season.
Common Gardener’s Practice: Following the Plant’s Flowering Cycle
When the potato plant flowers, it has generally reached maturity.
The potatoes will begin to plump up at this point, growing until the plant starts to die back.
This is prime time for harvesting tender new potatoes.
If you want to harvest all of your new potatoes at the same time, try to time your harvest when most of the potato plants have started to flower.
If you harvest the plants too early, the tubers may be incredibly small, greatly reducing your harvest size.
If some plants seem very short and immature, you can leave them behind for the time being.
These small plants will take a little bit longer to reach the flowering stage, but they will be able to provide the family with a meal of fresh, new potatoes well after the main harvest.
Freshest Eating Option: Staggering the New Potato Harvest
If you want to feed your family only the freshest new potatoes, there is a trick that families have been using for centuries:
They stagger the potato harvest.
Potato tubers can be eaten at virtually any stage of development; therefore, many families throughout history would harvest their potatoes as needed for survival.
This keeps the family from having to store these potatoes, which, frankly, will not store well in a pantry.
Instead, leave the plants in the ground and gently harvest only the tubers that are needed for a meal.
Continue this process until the plants are completely harvested, or until the plants die back at the end of the season.
