I ask because on one of my visits to the farmers’ market last summer, there were some cute small potatoes that caught my eye. They weren’t round – they were more finger-shaped, but smaller and slightly different-looking than the usual fingerling potatoes. I asked the woman behind the table about them, and she said, “Those are from an experiment that we tried that didn’t work. They’re supposed to be bigger, but we planted them too late and they never really sized up for us.”

I appreciated her honesty, but I didn’t buy the potatoes. At $4 for a tiny box (less than a pound, probably), I would have wanted some darn good potatoes, and a “failed experiment” didn’t sound like it would do it for me. But would it have?