[AT] digging potatoes

[David Bruce]

Good point about the air circulation Charlie.

David
NW NC

On 7/2/2013 7:04 AM, charlie hill wrote:
> I'm sure the hay insulates the potatoes.  I always figured
> it had the effect of keeping the separated and allowing some
> air circulation around them too.
>
> I know some commercial potato growers but don't see them often.
> I just don't know what the curing process is.  I think it is about
> keeping the temp. stable and the air dry but not a lot of heat
> or cooling.
>
> It's interesting how they buy potatoes.  Most of the potatoes grown
> here in NC go to potato chip production.  When the spuds are harvested
> the buyer comes by and brings a little "fry daddy" type deep fryer with him.
> He slices up a few randomly selected potatoes and fries them up into
> chips and eats them.  He also selects some at random and slices them in
> half to look for necrosis (dark spots in the middle).  If he finds the dark
> spots he reduces the price based on the percentage of necrosis he believes
> is in the crop.  Then the final price is adjusted based on the taste,
> crunch, etc.
> of the chips he cooked.   I've never actually seen this done.  Just going by
> what I was told.
>
> Charlie