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2008 Yearly Report |
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2008 marks the International Year of the Potato, issued by the United Nations to raise awareness on the need to increase production to defeat global hunger, and the first year of the Kenosha Potato Project. Every issue needs to find a local solution first, in order to have a chance globally.
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| The Kenosha Potato Project is a genetic diversity conservation effort shared by a network of local gardeners and farmers who pledged to grow specific potato varieties and save the seed (tuber pieces) for future generations. In time more heritage and rare heirloom cultivars will be available at farmers' markets for our fellow Wisconsinites to enjoy. | ||||||||
| Credits | ||||||||
| We need to first give credit to Seed Saver Exchange, Decorah, IA for the "Mother Network of Gardeners" that preserved many of the cultivars still available to us today in living, tuber format. The USDA has the official responsibility for this task, but unfortunately only keeps in-vitro germplasm of many varieties - these are no longer available in tuber format for planting in gardens, thus are losing the heritage value. Future generations will be losing the connection of heirloom varieties and how their grand-parents used them to prepare comfort recipes.
Will Bonsall, Curator of the Scatterseed Project in Maine and Advisor to the Board of Seed Saver Exchange, wrote a message to the members to plea for help. He is the inspiration to start the Kenosha Potato Project. Frederick Brookhouse, Founding Member of GreenKenosha, started Community Gardens with some of his neighbors and has performed the best of all local gardeners this year. We also need to credit www.davesgarden.com for helping us increase the awareness of our project on their web pages. We invite all local gardeners to search those web pages, find your favorite cultivars and post comments.
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| Kenosha Potato Project in Numbers | ||||||||
| Starting with a visit to Bill Minkey, in Darien, Wisconsin, Curzio and Frederick collected the first dozen of rare and not so rare cultivars last spring.
More than 100 cultivars came from Will Bonsall (Scattered Seed Project) and other SSE members. A few more very crucial, rare cultivars with high historic value (The Lumpers and Myatt's Ashleaf, aka Kidney potato) arrived to Kenosha in the fall courtesy of Will Woy Weaver, author of The Heirloom Vegetable Garden. We now have a total count of 123 cultivars, with just one variety lost this year that has not been replaced yet. Almost all cultivars already have a "home" for 2009 in the gardens of the 20 local gardeners who have participated in 2008. For 2009 we hope to increase the local gardeners network to 80. We estimate this number based on the nearly 30 new gardeners that have already enlisted, and an invitation extended to a few hundred local Master Gardeners. Will Bonsall has 60 additional cultivars ready for delivery to Kenosha in 2009, and more cultivars will be selected out of the Seed Saver Exchange Yearbook of 2009 which is listing 657 potato cultivars. We expect to increase the total cultivar number to reach 250 varieties before the end of 2009.
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| Kenosha Potato Project in the Future | ||||||||
| Despite the financial crisis that has hit the global economy this year, we are confident that more and more residents are going to consider gardening as a crucial activity.
The future are our children. Teach them how to garden, how to cook, how to select the perfect potato cultivars to obtain the best results in preparing your comfort foods. This is the ultimate legacy that Kenosha Potato Project wants to leave to our children. If you are interested to grow potatoes in your garden this year or in 2010, and wish to participate, please contact us. Please note that we do not mail seed - you need to come to Kenosha - if you live too far to come, you cannot be part of this local project. All potato varieties grown by the Kenosha Potato Project are also available through Seed Saver Exchange members. This could be an alternative if you live far from Kenosha, Wisconsin.
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