By Nik Crawley, founder of GardenTrack · Updated July 26, 2026
✓ In your garden
German Butterball is the potato people grow for the mash — a late-season yellow with lightly netted golden skin and deep, almost egg-yolk-gold flesh that's repeatedly won informal taste-offs, and it keeps better than most yellows to boot. The honest trade-off is patience: it's a true late-season variety (100–135 days) that bulks slowly early on and yields only moderately, so it needs a long season and rewards a gardener who isn't in a hurry. Its disease tolerance is mixed in the record, so scout it like any main-crop potato.
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German Butterball potatoes — tan, lightly netted tubers with a cut half showing the deep golden-yellow flesh that defines the variety. Eyeball-verified against the deep-gold-flesh trait. · Photo: Idéalités
(CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)
· source
Yellow potatoDeep-gold fleshLate-season keeper
“A late-season yellow potato with lightly netted golden skin and deep, buttery-gold flesh — a repeat winner in taste-panel comparisons, and one of the better keepers in the yellow-potato category, but it asks for patience: a long season and a slower bulking curve than most main-crop yellows.”
Days to maturity100–135 days (late)one of the longer main-crop windows; source estimates vary
Skin / fleshnetted golden skin, deep-gold fleshamong the richest flesh color of the yellows
Storagegood keepercures well; flavor reportedly improves after weeks in storage
Yieldmoderatenot a heavy producer; slow early bulking, catches up late
Flavor & textureTaste-off winner 5/5
Consistently rated among the best-tasting yellow potatoes in grower and catalog taste comparisons — dense, buttery, holds its shape, with deep-gold flesh that makes an exceptionally rich mash. This is its real claim to fame.
StorageKeeps well 4/5
One of the better keepers among yellow-fleshed potatoes when cured and stored cool and dark — and its flavor is often described as improving after a few weeks in storage, unusual for a yellow.
Season & bulkingLate and slow 2/5
A true late-season variety (roughly 100–135 days) that needs a long, uninterrupted season — a poor choice for short-season gardens or a quick second crop — and tubers are slow to size up early, lagging faster main-crop varieties through midsummer before catching up.
Yield & diseaseModerate, unproven tolerance 2/5
Yields are moderate rather than heavy. Disease reports are mixed — some cite scab/virus tolerance, but at least one university trial (Oregon State, 2019) flagged foliar disease and hollow-heart susceptibility — so treat its disease tolerance as unproven and scout it like any main-crop potato.
Plant it for the best-tasting mash in the cellar — if you have the long season and the patience to wait it out.
ButteryRichDenseCreamy mashGold-fleshed
✓ Taste-off-winning, deep-gold flesh; a good keeper~ Late season + slow bulking; moderate yield✗ Not for short seasons, quick crops, or fry-crisp jobs
Numbers from university growing guides. Ratings are our take, judged against all potatoes. Tap a meter to see why.
Growing basics — shared by every potato
German Butterball grows like any other potato. The full picture — how deep to plant, spacing, feeding, pests, harvest — lives on the Potato page so it's maintained in one place.
Greenhouse or cover on: your start slides ~4 weeks earlier and your harvest stretches ~3 weeks later (shown striped).
Planting seeds straight in the ground only works where the season's long and warm — most gardeners start seeds indoors or buy young plants, or you'd pick your first tomato right as frost hits.
Comfortable — first ripe fruit lands around early Jul, well before your typical frost (~late Oct).
Plant seeds outside
late Mar – early Apr
Growing
early Apr – early Jul
Picking
early Jul – late Aug
Typical dates for zone 6b — set your zone or ZIP above for yours.
What to plant near German Butterball — and what to keep away
✓ Good neighbors
Cabbage familyTraditional
Old chart pairing.
✗ Keep apart
TomatoPractical
Same family, same late blight. One sick bed infects the other.
The badge is the honesty.Trialed = a published field trial · Practical = a real mechanism · Traditional = companion-chart lore. These pairings hold for every potato.
Pairings compiled from West Virginia University Extension.
Growing German Butterball — the things that trip people up
Plant it for flavor and the cellar, not for speed or volume. German Butterball is a taste-off winner with deep-gold, buttery flesh and it keeps well — but it's a moderate-yielding, late-season variety, so grow it as your quality mash-and-store potato, not your main-season workhorse.
Give it a full, long season. At 100–135 days it needs the whole season and bulks slowly early on, lagging faster varieties through midsummer before catching up late — don't rush the harvest, and skip it entirely if your season is short.
Keep water even and pH low. It's been flagged for hollow heart, which even watering prevents, and holding soil pH around 5.0–5.5 suppresses scab. Set your zone on the [potato page](/plants/potato/) for planting dates.
From university growing guides (see Sources).
A modern 'heirloom' with a taste-off pedigree
German Butterball was introduced in 1988 by David Ronniger of Ronniger Seed Potatoes in Idaho, from a small stock of tubers he selected and increased. That makes it a modern introduction marketed as an heirloom rather than a decades-old heritage variety, and its exact parentage was never publicly documented — worth knowing when catalogs lean on the old-world name.
Its real claim to fame is a taste-off: a first-place finish in a Rodale's Organic Gardening magazine potato tasting, a result repeated by multiple seed catalogs. One honest correction, though — it has not won an All-America Selections award (no AAS potato win exists for it), and no specific year is reliably attached to the Rodale result, so we report it as a taste-off win, not a dated award.
Deep-gold flesh, and it holds together
You can spot it by the flesh: deep gold to almost egg-yolk yellow, one of the richest-colored flesh tones among common yellow potatoes, under a pale tan-yellow, lightly netted or russeted skin with shallow eyes. The tubers are medium-large, round to oblong, and fairly uniform.
The texture is the other half of the reputation — dense, moist but firm, and it holds together when boiled rather than going mealy or watery. That combination of rich color and firm-but-creamy flesh is exactly what makes it a standout for mash and gratins, and it's why grower taste panels keep ranking it near the top of the yellow-potato field.
The honest cost: late, slow, and only moderate
German Butterball asks for patience in exchange for the flavor. It's a true late-season variety, roughly 100 to 135 days depending on climate and source — one of the longer main-crop windows — so it needs a full, uninterrupted growing season and is a poor choice for short-season gardens or a quick second crop. And it bulks slowly: growers report it lagging behind faster main-crop varieties through midsummer before catching up late in the season, which can unnerve you if you dig early and find small tubers.
Yields are moderate rather than heavy, so it's a quality-over-quantity potato. Its disease profile is genuinely mixed in the record: some sources note field resistance to scab and viruses with partial late-blight tolerance, but at least one university variety trial — Oregon State, 2019 — flagged foliar disease issues and hollow-heart susceptibility. The honest read is to treat its disease tolerance as unproven rather than a guaranteed strength, and to scout it like any other main-crop potato.
Growing German Butterball
Plan for a full season — 100 to 135 days from planting. Plant seed-potato pieces (about two eyes each, cut and cured a day or two before planting) after the soil warms to 45–50°F, roughly two to three weeks before your last frost, spacing them 10–12 inches apart in rows 30–36 inches apart and 3–4 inches deep, in full sun. Hill soil around the stems as they grow to keep developing tubers covered and out of the sun so they don't green.
Two things matter most for clean tubers: keep soil evenly moist, especially through tuber bulking, because uneven watering drives the hollow heart and knobby tubers this variety has been flagged for; and hold soil pH on the acidic side (about 5.0–5.5) to suppress common scab. Because it's a late variety, harvest well after your main-season types — wait for the foliage to yellow and die back, and don't rush it, since bulking continues late.
What goes wrong — and the fixes
Common scab (raised, corky skin patches) is the most likely cosmetic complaint and is worse in alkaline or dry soil — keep pH near 5.0–5.5, keep the soil evenly moist for the two to six weeks after tuber set, avoid fresh manure or wood ash before planting, and rotate out of potatoes and other scab hosts for 3–4 years. Hollow heart (a dark internal cavity) has been flagged for this variety specifically, and even, consistent watering through bulking is the fix — avoid the drought-then-soak cycle that drives rapid, uneven growth.
Late blight is the weather-driven serious one: dark, water-soaked leaf lesions that spread to tuber rot in wet conditions. Plant certified disease-free seed, avoid overhead watering late in the day, maximize airflow between plants, and remove and destroy infected foliage promptly — don't compost it. And hand-pick Colorado potato beetles and larvae early or use row cover before they arrive, rotating the planting location yearly since beetles overwinter near last year's bed.
In the kitchen
Mashing is the signature use — the dense, deep-gold flesh makes an exceptionally buttery mash that needs little added fat, and the rich color looks like you've already stirred in butter. It also roasts and bakes well, shines in gratins where color and a firm-but-creamy texture matter, and holds together in soups and chowders without disintegrating.
Its weaker fits follow from that moist, dense flesh. It's not the first choice for a potato salad if you want distinct, separate cubes — it leans softer than a true waxy salad potato like a fingerling or red — and it's not an ideal french-fry potato, since its moderate starch-and-moisture balance browns less crisply than a high-starch russet. For richness and mash, though, few potatoes beat it.
German Butterball potato at a glance
German Butterball Potato — at a glance
Type
Yellow
Days to ripe
90–120 days after you plant it outside
Color
Yellow
Extra fields from seed-catalog listings and university growing guides. Days to ripe and disease resistance shift with your climate and seed source — double-check with your local extension office before you buy.
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Common questions about German Butterball
Is German Butterball really the best-tasting potato?
It has a strong claim. German Butterball won a first-place finish in a Rodale's Organic Gardening potato taste-off and is consistently rated among the best-tasting yellow potatoes by growers — its dense, buttery, deep-gold flesh makes an exceptionally rich mash. 'Best' is a taste judgment, and note it's a taste-off result, not an official award like AAS, which it has not won.
Why is my German Butterball yielding so little / sizing up slowly?
That's characteristic of the variety, not necessarily a problem. It's a late-season potato (100–135 days) that bulks slowly early on and lags faster varieties through midsummer before catching up late, and its overall yield is moderate rather than heavy. Don't dig it early expecting full-size tubers — wait for the foliage to yellow and die back, and make sure it has a long enough season.
Does German Butterball store well?
Yes — it's one of the better keepers among yellow-fleshed potatoes. Cured and stored cool (about 38–40°F), dark, and humid, it holds well, and its flavor is often described as improving after a few weeks in storage. That storage quality, plus the rich flavor, is a big part of why gardeners grow this late variety despite its slower, more modest harvest.
What's the best way to cook German Butterball?
Mash it — that's its signature. The dense, deep-gold flesh makes a buttery mash with little added fat, and it's also excellent roasted, baked, in gratins, and in soups where it holds together. It's a weaker choice for a chunky potato salad (it leans softer than a true waxy potato) and for french fries (it browns less crisply than a russet), so save it for the rich, creamy preparations.
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