The potatoes Linda, Annabelle & Gala are well-known varieties. You can find the best potato varieties in Germany from floury to waxy here.

Since 2008 was proclaimed the International Year of the Potato (Solanum tuberosum), the potato has received a little more attention. Nevertheless, the potato often still leads a shadowy existence. In most German supermarkets there is only a very limited selection of potato varieties. The 210 varieties cultivated in Germany may seem like a lot, but appearances can be deceiving. If you compare the selection of varieties in Germany with the more than 4000 potato varieties known to us, it quickly becomes clear that modern agriculture only cultivates a dangerously small gene pool.

Potato varieties at a glance: waxy to floury

The different potato varieties can be subdivided according to different criteria. In addition to the classification according to the cooking properties (boiling to floury), the time of ripening (very early to late) is particularly important among hobby gardeners.

Potatoes are divided into three different categories depending on their starch content: waxy, predominantly waxy and floury. The more starch a potato contains, the looser it becomes when cooked. Floury potatoes are therefore drier and softer than the waxy version. This is firm and juicy and has a pithy bite and a fine structure. The properties of mainly waxy potatoes lie between the two variants.
The type of dish that can be prepared from them depends on the properties of the tuber. After all, fried potatoes shouldn't fall apart so quickly, while this is of course more desirable when preparing mashed potatoes.

Potatoes from your own garden simply taste best!

Wammy Potatoes

Wammy potatoes usually contain slightly less starch than floury ones. Waxy varieties are used especially for fried potatoes, potato salad and boiled potatoes, as they are firmer, "juicier" and have a finer texture.

  • Linda: medium-early variety with long, oval tubers whose smooth skin is yellow. Thatdeep yellow flesh has an excellent creamy taste and is popular as a salad, boiled, jacket or gratin potato. Furthermore, this variety is characterized by its good shelf life.
  • Sieglinde: early variety with long oval tubers and typically yellow skin and flesh. Due to its pleasantly strong taste, this potato is very popular for salad dishes or as a boiled or jacket potato.
  • Heideniere: medium-early variety with elongated tubers in a typical yellow colour. Their delicately spicy, greasy taste makes Heideniere a popular jacket, salad or boiled potato.
  • Annabelle: very early potato variety with elongated tubers whose skin and flesh are typically yellow. The potatoes impress with their very good, fine taste and are suitable for salads, jacket potatoes or boiled potatoes.
  • Nicola: medium-early variety with long, oval tubers in a typical yellow colour. The light yellow, tasty flesh is suitable as a jacket, boiled or salad potato. Nicola is Potato of the Year 2016!
  • La Ratte: medium-early variety with a long, croissant-shaped tuber whose skin and flesh are yellow. This potato variety is also known as "Asparges" and impresses with its very good, greasy taste. It is suitable as a salad or jacket potato.
  • Goldmarie: early variety with long oval tubers and yellow skin. The yellow flesh has a fine, aromatic taste and is suitable as a jacket, boiled or salad potato.
  • Glorietta: very early variety with long, oval, yellow tubers. The deep yellow flesh has a very aromatic taste and is suitable for salads, grilled potatoes or baked potatoes.
  • Charlotte: medium-early potato variety with long, oval, yellow tubers. The yellow flesh has a very good, aromatic taste and is suitable for salads and jacket potatoes.
  • Allians: medium-early variety with long, oval, yellow tubers. The deep yellow flesh is characterized by a very fine aroma and is popular as a salad, boiled or jacket potato.

Predominantly waxy potatoes

This type of potato already has a slightly higher starch content and with it a higher tendency to break down during cooking. Predominantly waxy potato varieties are mainly suitable for preparing boiled and jacket potatoes as well as french fries.

  • La Bonnotte: medium-early variety with yellow, round tubers with deep eyes. The yellow flesh is extremely creamy and has a delicate taste. The potatoes are suitable for jacket, boiled or salad potatoes.
  • Finca: veryearly variety with oval tubers whose skin and flesh are typically yellow. Its strong aroma makes it a popular mashed or boiled potato.
  • Granola: medium-early variety with round-oval tubers in a typical yellow colour. Due to its excellent taste, it is popular as a fried potato or for dumplings and potato dough dishes.
  • Eersteling: very early variety with long oval tubers with typical yellow skin and flesh. Because of their good, greasy taste, they are popular as boiled, baked or mashed potatoes.
  • Aeggeblomme: medium-early variety with round tubers and yellow skin. The meat is deep yellow in color and impresses with its unique, delicately spicy taste. It is suitable as a boiled, boiled, baked or mashed potato.
  • Lady Balfour: medium-early variety with round-oval tubers whose yellow skin is studded with red dots. The light yellow flesh has a good aromatic taste and is popular as a boiled and baked potato.
  • Marabel: early variety with oval yellow tubers. The yellow flesh is very aromatic and is suitable as a jacket or boiled potato.
Even in your own garden you can have a rich potato harvest

Predominantly firm to floury potatoes

The mainly waxy to floury potato varieties can be used for the same dishes as potatoes that are mainly waxy. Some chefs therefore combine these two categories.

  • Hela: very early variety with oval tubers. Both skin and flesh are typically yellow in color. The potatoes have a pleasantly mild aroma and are suitable as mashed, boiled or baked potatoes.
  • Bintje: medium-early variety with long-oval tubers whose skin and flesh are yellow. The potatoes are characterized by their mild, creamy taste and are popular as baked, mashed or boiled potatoes.
  • Almond potato: medium-late variety with small, almond-like tubers with a typical yellow colour. It is also known as "Puikula" and is a popular jacket potato due to its creamy taste.

Mealy Potatoes

Floury potato varieties have a higher starch content. These potatoes break down more easily when cooked and are ideal for use in dishes such as mashed potatoes, gnocchi, dumplings and potato soups.

  • Augusta: early variety with round-oval, typically yellow tubers. Thanks to their mild, aromatic taste, the potatoes are ideal for soups, dumplings or gnocchi.
  • Adretta:medium-early variety with yellow, round tubers. The yellow flesh has a strong, spicy taste and is ideal for dumplings and potato dough dishes.
  • Ackersegen: medium-late potato variety with round tubers in a typical yellow colour. The potatoes have an excellent buttery flavor and are great for mashing or baking.

Quick Cooking Potatoes

  • Mayan Gold: medium-early variety with elongated tubers, which are typically yellow in color. Due to their creamy but pleasantly dry texture and nutty-sweet aroma, these potatoes are ideal as baked potatoes, potato soup or pancakes.

Exotics: colorful and special potato varieties

For some years now, more exotic varieties have come back into fashion. The Blue Annelise, for example, has dark blue to purple flesh. In general, such colorful potatoes usually have a more intense and nutty taste. These varieties are particularly suitable for decorative and attractive dishes, such as a colorful potato salad made from yellow, red and purple potatoes.

The selection of potato varieties is impressive
  • Red Emmalie: early-ripening variety with elongated tubers. The shell is smooth and strikingly red in color. The predominantly waxy potatoes are particularly suitable for salads, mashed potatoes, boiled potatoes or pink-red gnocchi due to their spicy taste.
  • Heather red: medium late variety with long oval tubers. Both skin and flesh are colored red. The waxy potatoes have a slightly buttery, aromatic taste and are ideal for salads, roasts and jacket potatoes.
  • Violetta: medium-early variety with long-oval tubers. The skin is deep blue and the flesh is unusually purple in colour. The waxy potatoes with a pleasantly strong taste are particularly popular as boiled potatoes, jacket potatoes, fried potatoes or as a colorful potato salad.
  • Blaue Anneliese: medium late variety with oval tubers. The waxy potatoes are particularly noticeable because of their beautiful blue skin and blue flesh. Due to its pleasantly strong aroma, it is well suited as a salad, boiled or blue mashed potato.
  • Angeliter Pine cones: medium late variety with long, overgrown (pine cone-like) tubers. The firm-boiling tubers with pink skin and yellow flesh have a delicately aromatic aroma and are suitable for jacket potatoes, salad potatoes and fried potatoes.

Tip: The plant needs enough nutrients for a rich potato harvest. Excellentis our Plantura organic tomato fertilizer with a long-term effect. This provides the potatoes with ideal nutrients and is kind to the environment.

  • Laura: medium-early variety with long, oval tubers, the skin of which is strikingly red and the flesh is deep yellow. The predominantly waxy potatoes have a pleasantly strong taste and are suitable for French fries, boiled potatoes, baked potatoes or mashed potatoes.
  • Bamberger Krumbeere: medium-late variety with croissant-shaped tubers whose skin is yellow-pink in color. The firm, yellow flesh has a very good, spicy taste and is ideal for salads, roasts or jacket potatoes.
  • Desiree: medium-early variety with oval tubers. What is striking here is the red skin and the light yellow flesh, which is characterized by its juicy, fruity aroma. The potatoes are suitable as baked, s alted, jacket potatoes or rösti.
  • Schwarze Ungarin: medium-early variety with elongated tubers whose skin is deep blue-violet in colour. In contrast is the light yellow, almost white flesh, which has a great creamy taste. The mealy potatoes are suitable as jacket and puree potatoes.
  • Odenwald Blue: medium-late variety with round tubers, the skin of which is dark blue and contrasts with the light yellow flesh. The mealy potatoes have a good, spicy taste and are suitable as mashed, baked or boiled potatoes.
  • Pink pine cones: medium-late variety with croissant-shaped tubers whose skin is pink. The firm-boiling meat is yellow in color and has a very good, spicy aroma. The potatoes are also called "pink fir apple" and are suitable as a salad or jacket potato.
  • Rode debut: early variety with conspicuous red, round-oval tubers. The yellow flesh has a wonderful creamy taste. The mainly waxy potatoes are also known as "Red Duke of York" and are suitable as mashed or boiled potatoes.
  • Blue Swede: medium-early variety with round-oval tubers whose skin and flesh are a beautiful blue-violet colour. The mainly waxy potato is also known as "Blue Congo" and with its strong taste is well suited as a salad, baked, jacket or boiled potato.
  • Pink Gipsy: early to medium-early variety with long-oval tubers whose skin is a striking yellow-red colour. The mostly waxy, yellow flesh is characterized by a good, fine taste and is suitable as s alted and baked potatoes.
  • Red Sonia: very early potato variety with oval tubers and a striking red skin. Thatlight yellow flesh impresses with its good, spicy taste. The predominantly waxy potato is well suited as a baked and mashed potato.
  • Sarpo Mira: medium late variety with long, oval, light red tubers. The light yellow flesh is characterized by the fruity taste. The predominantly waxy potato is popular as a boiled, jacket and salad potato. Sarpo Mira has a high resistance to late blight!

Potato varieties: classification according to ripening time

In addition to the cooking properties, the ripening time is also of great importance for the hobby gardener. Without special protection or pesticides, late-ripening potato varieties are affected by late blight. Early-ripening varieties can be harvested before this pesky fungus appears.

Potatoes used to be grown for their beautiful flowers

Very early varieties:

  • Acapella
  • Arosa
  • Bellaprima
  • Finca
  • Osira

Early ripening varieties:

  • Assets
  • Cilena
  • Gala
  • Marabel
  • Princess

Mid-early varieties:

  • Agria
  • Blue Swede
  • blue St. Galler
  • Filea
  • Quarta

Medium late to late ripening varieties:

  • Agriculture blessings
  • Cascada
  • Highland Burgundy Red
  • Black blue from the Franconian Forest
  • Vitelotte

A Call for Diversity: Lessons from the Great Famine

One shouldn't focus too much on the limited choice from an economic point of view (because groceries also have to be affordable). However, it is reasonable to assume that a chapter of European history is hardly present in people's minds. For the Great Famine, known in English as Irish potato famine , had at least part of its cause in the cultivation of a few potato varieties. This genetically very limited pool of varieties had no resistance to potato blight (Phytophthora infestans). The fungal disease quickly became an epidemic and led to enormous crop failures. In conjunction with the heavy dependence on the potato as a staple food, one of the greatest famines in human history occurred in the years 1845-1852. According to current knowledge, around one million people died as a result and around two million people emigrated from Ireland. The famine that happened in the past should still be seen as a warning today.It is true that nutrition has become much more diverse and, thanks to modern pesticides, agriculture is armed against crop failures. Nevertheless, the genetic pool is of great importance for the breeding of new varieties. Even in the Andes, the home of the potato, where the tubers have been cultivated for thousands of years, the diversity of varieties is shrinking. Many varieties have fallen victim to disease, structural upheaval and rural exodus in recent decades.

Potatoes are extremely productive and worth growing in every garden

But there is hope for the biodiversity of potatoes: The International Potato Center (IPC) was founded in Peru in 1971, co-financed by the Global Crop Diversity Trust. Among other things, the IPC supports the Parque de la Papa, a 15,000 hectare park that aims to become the Noah's Ark of the potato. Local and regional potato species and varieties are cultivated and protected in the park. So far, the park includes around 1300 different varieties. In the long term, as many of the 4,000 varieties as possible are to be established there. In addition to the cultivated potato (Solanum tuberosum), which is mainly known in Europe, about a dozen other potato species are cultivated in the Andes. Experts also assume there are over 200 wild species. In addition to the innumerable types of potatoes, there are around 3,000 different types of potatoes native to the Andes.

Potato varieties in Germany: Sieglinde, Ackersegen and Reichskanzler

In Germany, around 210 potato varieties are currently approved for cultivation. As already mentioned above, in Germany the varieties are categorized according to different properties. In addition to the type of cooking (firm-boiling, mainly firm-boiling and floury), the taste (mild, delicately spicy, strongly spicy, nutty, sweet, marzipan aroma), texture (floury, buttery, creamy), color of the skin and the flesh (white, yellow , pink, red, violet) and time of harvest (very early, early, medium early, medium to late ripe).

Not enough potatoes yet? Check out this article for 8 more early ripening potato varieties to grow in the garden.

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Vegetables