So, yesterday morning, I dug the buried treasure, eager to see if they actually looked like giant buried Peanut Fingerlings, three to four inches long. I shoved my garden fork in the ground, at a distance from the dried tops, not wanting to spear any of the fingerlings with a tine. The soil turned over easily, still a bit moist from the recent rain, and there they all were -- peanut-shaped all right. But so small they looked like midget peanuts, no more than an inch or an inch and a half long. Not to worry, I thought, just a result of being a bit shaded by the pin oak tree. So I moved to the next spot and eagerly turned over the soil, only to find another handful of midgets. And another, and another. And so few potatoes, the whole batch of eight plants yielded no more than two or three meals' worth. The six red potato plants produced a somewhat better yield. Still, I felt as if the Irish potato famine had been replayed right in my own back yard.
Carl H. Klause, My Vegetable Love: A Journal of a Growing Season
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