Wood Prairie Farm's new Organic Prairie Blush Potato has earned the Green Thumb Award from the Mailorder Gardening Association (MGA) as one of the top six plant introductions of 2009.
Jim Gerritsen, who owns and operations the organic Wood Prairie Farm in Bridgewater, Maine, along with his family, recently traveled to Baltimore to receive the award at the MGA's Winter Convention. The MGA is the world's largest nonprofit association of companies that sell garden products directly to consumers and this year is celebrating its 75th anniversary.
"Every year the competition for a Green Thumb Award is pretty intense especially from the ornamentals sector," said Gerritsen. "As an organic seed potato farmer, it's great to see the resurgence of interest in home vegetable gardening and in healthy vegetables like Prairie Blush."
Prairie Blush is a "one-in-a-million" chance discovery of a clonal variant-a pink blushing tuber from a single hill in a field of Yukon Gold potatoes on Wood Prairie Farm back in 2001.
Prairie Blush is an early mid-season golden-fleshed potato variety noted for its exceptional flavor and texture, beautiful blush skin markings, excellent storage qualities and strong suitability to organic culture. Seven subsequent years of field trialing under certified organic conditions revealed that Prairie Blush plants are robust, vigorous, upright and fast growing.
The plants sport light purple blossoms. Prairie Blush exhibits good tuber set and fine yields of tubers that are round-to-slightly oblong, bright, smooth, shallow-eyed and display excellent resistance to sprouting in storage.
Neither a red-skinned nor a golden-skinned variety, Prairie Blush fills the unique niche of a bi-color potato. Lab tests confirm that Prairie Blush has a desirable and distinctive moister texture when compared to Yukon Gold.
Additionally, Prairie Blush possesses a unique blending of Amylose and Amylopectin starches that give the tubers a reliably firm texture, making them ideally suited to roasting, frying or boiling.
Prairie Blush will appeal to both the kitchen gardener and the market gardener with its delectable golden flesh and rare beauty, exceptional old-time potato flavor and ease of organic growing. Prairie Blush Double-Certified Organic Seed Potatoes are available exclusively from Wood Prairie Farm: 1-800-829-9765 or www.woodprairie.com.