The first new potatoes have surfaced. Farmer Johan Sandgren in Väsby, outside of Höganäs, started harvesting around 500 kilos (1100 lbs) to be ready for delivery just in time for the Easter herring.
“It’s great. And very tasty too,” he says. Johan took over the farm from his father, and it makes him extra proud to be the first in Sweden to harvest the year’s first new potatoes, which will sell for 300 SEK a kilo ($45 per 2.2 lbs). The potatoes were grown in a greenhouse, of course, where there’s been no frost. Johan planted them in January, and picked them by hand. The type of potato Johan grows is called Rocket.
“It’s the absolutely best sort, and it is especially suitable for greenhouse growing. There’s often another type of new potato that comes first called Swift, but it isn’t as tasty as Rocket,” Sandgren says.