Green Mountain

seed potatoes

Solanum tuberosum
Buff skin, white flesh. This 1885 heirloom from Vermont has been out of circulation since 2021 when we lost access to certified seed stock. The potential loss of this beloved variety was the heartbreak of many New England growers. A true potato lover’s potato, baked or boiled, the medium-sized round tubers have unparalleled fluffiness and an earthy flavor that doesn’t fade in long storage. We had to get this variety back in circulation! In collaboration with one of our long-time potato growers, we embarked on a Green Mountain restoration, scouring seed banks for genetic material; growing out clonal plantlets from tissue culture; cleaning and testing to ensure 100% health; and finally growing out the mini-tubers that are the foundation of a certified-seed line. This year we’re thrilled to offer a limited supply of second-generation seed stock. Resistant to fusarium storage rot, black leg and verticillium wilt. Susceptible to viral diseases and scab.

Supplier Transparency:
? Family-owned companies or cooperatives, domestic and foreign

ships in spring

7143 Green Mountain

Shipping

For orders placed by February 21, 2025, this item will ship on our regular shipping schedule, starting in late March with the warmest states and finishing by early May. Orders placed after February 21, 2025 will be shipped later, and in the order in which they were received. We cannot ship this item any earlier; we regret that we cannot honor any requests to do so.

Additional Information

Saving the Green Mountain Potato

Late blight, responsible for famines in the northern hemisphere, arrived in the U.S. in 1840, and a considerable effort to develop resistant potato varieties soon followed. One of the earliest achievements was the Green Mountain potato, developed by Orson Alexander of the University of Vermont in 1878 and released seven years later. While not considered late-blight resistant by today’s standards, the variety offered heavy yields, great flavor and versatile culinary uses. It became the dominant potato variety grown in New England.

By the 1950s, however, mechanized industry favored potatoes with a more consistent shape and size, and new russet potatoes began to replace the old Green Mountains. Still, it held on as a staple for homesteaders and gardeners for the rest of the century.

In the early 2000s, the Slow Food Ark of Taste highlighted the variety as being on the decline, and in 2020 the very last of the available certified seed was offered in our catalog. (See: What is certified potato seed?)

Responding to the outpouring of customer requests for Green Mountain, we set our sights on saving the vanishing breed. We teamed up with a family in Maine that grows foundation seed potatoes for the majority of growers on the eastern seaboard and beyond, and they were able to find a clean source of Green Mountain tissue maintained by the Maine Potato Board. In 2022 the first new plantlets were grown in beds of sterile soil to produce a batch of minitubers, which in 2023 were grown out into seed potatoes. We are proud to be able to offer certified Green Mountain seed to Fedco customers nearly 150 years after its first introduction.

Seed Potatoes Solanum tuberosum

One pound of seed will usually plant 5–8 row feet, depending on the variety; 10# will usually plant 50 row feet.

Early potatoes mature in 65-80 days.
Midseason potatoes mature in 80-90 days
Late potatoes mature in more than 90 days

See Growing Potatoes for more information.