Digging Potatoes

      Our potato supply had dwindled to essentially nothing. I had planted lots of potatoes in March, but had not dug them as needed in July or August because it was too stinking hot. The tops then all died off, and it was very easy to forget about the potatoes. I threw in some leaves where the bed was, and hoped the vole damage wouldn't wipe out everything. In early fall, my grandson Wesley helped me dig a section of the bed and we did quite well with a harvest.
      Never having left potatoes this long in the garden, I was fearful when I invited Wesley for a potato hunting adventure when Barb and Emily and all the kids and hubbies were here yesterday. Wesman and I raked backed the leaves and I started to dig. Bingo, we soon had a hit. And then another. Some big, some small, some whoppers. Wesman was scooping up potatoes, and throwing them in a pile. As we moved along the bed and away from the pile, it made sense to bring the little green wagon into play. Then Wes took the wagon by the kitchen to show everyone. At that point Ella joined in the digging, so I had two eager helpers.
      The haul was much better than any of my expectations. Our supply has gone back up.

Potato haul, November 28, 2015

Wesman, the Potato Man

Do you think he had fun?

       Wesley and family did take some of the potatoes home, but I will move the rest to the basement for storage. And, did I mention that all of these potatoes were free? They were started from left overs from last year that sprouted and were then planted in March. These are scrumptious Kennebec potatoes. I will keep a bunch that have some vole damage for seed potatoes for next year.

Picking Potatoes

       Back on April 6th of this spring I put my Kennebec potato starts in the ground.  I ran out of garden space in the back yard for potatoes, so took the leftover starts over to my park garden.

      These two trenches were about eight feet long, and the potato starts are about a foot apart in each row.  The bed itself was actually the remains of about eight inches of leaves covered with mushroom soil from the previous year when I was trying to wipe out a weed invasion.  There was no prep this year, just using a hoe to make the trenches.  In went the potato pieces and the trenches were refilled.

      The picture above shows the potato patch on the left as of June first.  Potato beetles found the patch a couple of weeks ago, and although insecticidal soap had kept them somewhat in check, I found the adult beetles in force this morning.  I dug my hand under one plant, expecting to find only a few new potatoes, but was surprised to find a couple of good sized spuds.  Decided then to harvest the whole small bed to take away the beetle food supply.

      The vines had only started to yellow and had not collapsed at all, so I would not have harvested yet if not for the beetle problem.  But the good news is, the potatoes look great, and were harvestable by hand by simply pulling up the plants.  The potatoes had formed in the leaf layer, and were essentially sitting on top of the harder soil.

      This picture shows how the potatoes just pulled out with the rest of the plant.  Then pulled them off the roots and put them in the harvest bucket.

      What a great harvest.  From just the small patch of leftover seed potatoes at the park.  Wonder what the bigger patch will yield.

Potato Experiment

      I have grown potatoes for several years.  Or I should say potatoes have been growing in my garden for several years, as both a white and a purple potato come back every year from potatoes that I have missed, yet overwinter to grow on in the spring.  There have never been good yields, and the potatoes have often had small little bug holes.  Not a crop that has showered me with great harvests.  So I was a bit surprised when a gardening and fish keeping friend, Lee Harper, stated that his most successful crop was potatoes.
      That statement started me to wonder if maybe I should give potatoes one last real try before giving up on them.  Early this spring, Lee said that he was going to buy seed potatoes, and would buy some for me.  So now, I could try one last time, using magic seed potatoes.  Lee said he puts in about five pounds, so I figured, what the heck, I will try two pounds.  He proceeded to buy me two pounds, I paid him the $1.50 total cost of my purchase, and took possession of my FOUR lovely Kennebec potatoes.  Four.  Well it was only an experiment without high expectations.
      It was "too this" or "too that" for me to plant them right away, so the potatoes sat around for probably ten days before I finally cut then into pieces of about one inch square.  The mother potatoes were eyed up nicely, so each little cube potato had at least one eye.  I had read that you are supposed to let the pieces harden up the cuts before planting, so I put them aside in the shade for awhile.  And then a little while more.  Probably a little more than a little while, more like three days.  Enough time to shrivel them up, but the cut places were certainly dry.
      When I finally did get around to planting the eyed pieces, I hoed a shallow two inch deep trench down the middle of a three foot wide bed.  Put in the pieces about four inches apart from each other.  Covered them.  Then waited.  Waited some more.  Meanwhile the overwintered potatoes had done it again, and I was getting potato plants in two other parts of the garden.  Finally after a couple of weeks, I spotted a Kennebec sprout, then another and another.  I piled some leaf mold around the plants when they were about one foot tall, and had great intentions of piling on more leaf mold as the plants got bigger.  Never happened.  They did get bigger, and overran my path.  As a matter of fact, the plants looked to be about twice as big as the volunteer plants.

Kennebec potato patch,  July 19th, 2012

      A combination of factors made me decide to harvest the patch yesterday.  One, it was looking pretty scraggly.  Two, it had covered the path that you can see at the top of the photo.  Three, I did not want the voles to get more potatoes than I got.  And four, I just couldn't wait any longer to see what was down there.

      I started harvesting by just pulling up the plants.  Eureka!  Real potatoes.  Potatoes that actually look like potatoes.  In the first couple of pulls, I find three potatoes chomped by voles, but I have more than they have.  The harvest broke down like this:

Three for the voles

      These are the little potatoes that probably would have enjoyed some more growing time had I been more patient.  Looks like a nice bunch for frying in butter with some fresh sweet peppers for breakfast.

      This is the pile of potatoes that I had to work for, digging up the patch with a dull hoe while trying not to slice potatoes.  Worked up quite a sweat.  But when added to the potatoes that came up easily while pulling the plants, it resulted in a great harvest:

      Thank you Lee Harper.  I would like to put in my order now for seed potatoes for next spring.  Maybe four pounds.  And yes, the overwintered volunteer potatoes are still pretty scrawny.  Only the good seed will be allowed to grow next year.

      I moved the potatoes down to the basement where it is a little cooler and they will be out of the sunlight.  There were six more potatoes, but they have been taste tested.  And passed with flying colors.  All in all, a good return from a start of four seed potatoes.