by Barry Carter
Created: October 14, 2010
Modified: October 14, 2010
On October 13, 2010 Mike, a local friend who has a great garden, called to tell me about his giant potatoes. (Mike has been using Sea-Crop ORMUS on his garden for about four years.) I rushed over to see them and take some pictures. First he showed me a four of the largest of these potatoes and I took a picture with a couple of them on a piece of quarter inch grid paper:
Unfortunately one of his yellow labrador retrievers got his nose in the picture. The second picture, of the other two large potatoes, was a bit better:
Mike also put his hand in
one of the pictures for comparison:
These are better comparisons but I still wanted to compare the actual size a little more accurately so I weighed these four potatoes:
I'm pretty sure that the scale read 7.8 pounds but I couldn't see the readout clearly enough, in the picture, to be certain. So I decided to go back the next day to take some more pictures. I also took a picture of the largest potato on the scale and I could read the weight on this one. It weighed 2.6 pounds:
The next day (October 14, 2010) I decided to do a bit of preparation before I went over to Mike's place. I went to Safeway and bought a five pound bag of red potatoes for $2.99 to use for size comparison. This bag of potatoes actually weighed 5.2 pounds on my scale:
When I got to Mike's place, this time, I also took
pictures of the potato plants before, during and after he dug up the
potatoes. Here is the before picture (with Mike's yellow labs):
Prior to this potato dig, Mike already dug up about two thirds of his plants; so the plants in the picture above represent the remaining third. Here is a picture of the potatoes at the base of the first plant:
Here's a picture of all of the potatoes dug up from the plant above:
And here is a picture of the potatoes from all eight of the potato plants that Mike dug up on October 14:
These are better comparisons but I still wanted to compare the actual size a little more accurately so I weighed these four potatoes:
I'm pretty sure that the scale read 7.8 pounds but I couldn't see the readout clearly enough, in the picture, to be certain. So I decided to go back the next day to take some more pictures. I also took a picture of the largest potato on the scale and I could read the weight on this one. It weighed 2.6 pounds:
The next day (October 14, 2010) I decided to do a bit of preparation before I went over to Mike's place. I went to Safeway and bought a five pound bag of red potatoes for $2.99 to use for size comparison. This bag of potatoes actually weighed 5.2 pounds on my scale:
Prior to this potato dig, Mike already dug up about two thirds of his plants; so the plants in the picture above represent the remaining third. Here is a picture of the potatoes at the base of the first plant:
Here's a picture of all of the potatoes dug up from the plant above:
And here is a picture of the potatoes from all eight of the potato plants that Mike dug up on October 14:
Notice that the bag of
potatoes I purchased earlier is included in the picture above. Also
notice the group of potatoes right above the Safeway potatoes. I
decided to use this group from one
potato plant for my weight comparison
because it appeared to be about average. The potatoes from this plant
weighed 9.8 pounds:
I also weighed the five
largest potatoes that Mike dug on October 14 and they weighed 10.6
pounds:
The largest of the
potatoes dug on October 14 weighed 2.8 pounds:
If you add the weight of
the largest potato from October 13th to the weight of the largest
potato from October 14th you have a total weight of 5.4 pounds. This
means that two of Mike's potatoes are heavier than a five pound bag of
potatoes from Safeway! The typical size and weight for various potato
sizes is:
Potato, White, Russet or Red
Large (3" to 4-14" dia) 369g 13oz
Medium (2-1/4" to 3-1/4" dia) 213g 7.5oz
Small (1-3/4" to 2-1/4" dia) 170g 6oz
The average weight of the nine largest potatoes from Mike's garden was 32.7 ounces. This means that they average 2.5 times the size of the typical large potato.
Potato, White, Russet or Red
Large (3" to 4-14" dia) 369g 13oz
Medium (2-1/4" to 3-1/4" dia) 213g 7.5oz
Small (1-3/4" to 2-1/4" dia) 170g 6oz
The average weight of the nine largest potatoes from Mike's garden was 32.7 ounces. This means that they average 2.5 times the size of the typical large potato.