News on Early Potatoes from the United States

Swisspatat adds early potato variety Colomba as a new entry to its 2022 variety list in order to strengthen the supply of early season firm-skinned, firm-cooking potatoes (green line)

Florida's potato harvest has kicked off and growers are happy with conditions during the growing season thus far.

Potandon Produce L.L.C., the exclusive marketing agent for Pinto Creek Co., LLC in Eloy, Arizona, has announced that its fresh potato season will begin on Thursday, May 10th, 2018.

MountainKing Potatoes, a leading grower of table potatoes in the United States, has started the harvest of its Texas New Crop Reds, one of the company’s top sellers now available for retail grocers.

The South Florida potato harvest season has started well, with a good healthy crop taking shape. It has been underway for just over a month and despite cooler weather at the start of the year, South Florida crops escaped any major frost damage.

Dirk Hays,Texas A&M AgriLife Research plant geneticist: “With Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR), we can image the size of the tubers and get a correlation to the actual physical size of the potato without harvesting them. Potatoes are a dream for Ground Penetrating Radar.”

It’s potato planting time in North Florida. St. Johns County is one of the counties in Northern Florida well known for its potato production with the town of Hastings being the center of it.

This year's major news of the Texas A&M Potato Breeding Program is a new early potato variety called Reveille Russet, a russet baking potato headed to the fresh market.

In a typical year, potato growers who start digging their crop too soon give up some of their potential yield by harvesting immature spuds. But growers who wait this year may miss out on unheard-of prices.

As north Florida begins spring volume up to two weeks late, buyers can expect lower red potato supplies to keep demand high and prices above normal.

Some of Florida's potato crops (Hastings and East Palatka) took a hit when freezing temperatures moved through the area Sunday night and Monday morning.

Florida potato grower-shippers reported strong demand in early April, but an early start to the northern Florida deal could yield sluggish red potato markets in May. The week of April 9, all production in the Sunshine State was coming from the souther...

Florida potato growers didn’t escape damage from the surprise December freezes.