A Tough Row to Hoe

Last week Tricia made Potato Latkes for supper one night.  Potato Latkes are shredded potatoes, seasoned and with flour, egg, onions, and garlic.  Think of a crab cake but minus the crab.  They are so delicious, they make me want to holler.  I went and looked in our 'root cellar' to check on our inventory of potatoes remaining from the Spring harvest.  I like potatoes.  Potatoes are a simple, ordinary crop. Nothing fancy about 'em.  They'll sure sustain you, though.

We don't really have a cellar.  We live in Louisiana and if we dug a hole it would promptly fill with water. I think Jennings is at an elevation of 23 feet.  We do store our potatoes in the next best thing - our mud room.  It stays dark in there and there is a dedicated air conditioning vent that keeps the little room dark and cool - a perfect spot for storing potatoes.  We had a nice crop of potatoes this year.  It was our best crop yet.  We filled the two crates below with potatoes when we harvested back in May and here is what's left. We sorted them into the medium to large size:

The bottom of the barrel

And then the smaller sized ones:  If you look closely, you can see that many of the potatoes have 'eyes' that are starting to grow.

Almost gone!

You can see that our inventory is almost gone!  What are we going to do?  Well, we'll either buy some at the store OR maybe we could plant a Fall crop of potatoes.  Let's go with the latter.  I've never planted Fall potatoes, but I like to experiment and try new things.  I checked and saw that the recommended planting dates for our zone is August 15 - September 10th.  Well, I'm 13 days too late!

I was going to pull up a long row, but I don't want to risk losing a bunch of our potatoes if they're not going to make it, so I'm going to hedge my bets and only plant a small 12 foot row of potatoes.  The reason for the September 10th cut off date is undoubtedly to ensure that you harvest your taters prior to the first frost. Potatoes take 90 - 120 days until harvest.  I'll either harvest early, picking only "new potatoes," or I'll experiment with covering the potato plants with hay on nights with a frost.  Let's get going-Daylight's burning.

The old saying, "You've got a tough row to hoe," certainly applied here.  The ground was hard and dry.  I'm planting the potatoes in the yard and I'm using the land where we planted the sweet corn. I'm essentially pulling the two rows together into one and I'll plant down the middle.

A tough row to hoe!

The land here hasn't been amended with organic matter.  I'll work to better the soil over the next several years.  I'll add some organic fertilizer and some top soil for the time being.

Top soil and organic fertilizer

I broadcast the fertilizer on the row and sprinkled some topsoil.  Now I'll take my trusty hoe and work it all in real good, removing weeds and roots as I go.

Amending the soil

I went to the remaining inventory from our Spring potato harvest and selected the potatoes that had the nicest looking eyes.  Some were a little shriveled up, but that's okay.  We aren't eating these. We're going to plant them.

Fall Seed Potatoes from the Spring crop

The difference, I learned, with Fall potatoes is that you don't cut them up with one eye per chunk and allow them to scab over like when you are planting in the Spring. You plant them whole.  This is going to be fast.  Here is a nice seed potato about to go in the ground.  Notice that it still has some dirt on it.  If you're going to store potatoes, don't wash them.  That'll reduce the amount of time that they'll store. These have lasted since May and are still holding strong.  If we were to eat them, we'd simply pull off the sprouted eye.

A nice seed potato ready to grow

I dug a hole in the soft dirt with my hand about 3 inches down and deposited the potato with the sprout facing upward and planted them about 10 inches apart. Then I pulled the soil over them, got the water hose and gave the row a good sprinkling, imitating a rainfall of about 1/2 inches.  I wanted the water to soak down into the soil and wet the potato, signalling it to start growing.  The rule of thumb for estimated yield for potatoes is that you multiply the pounds of potatoes you planted by a factor of 10.  For example, if you planted 3 pounds of potatoes, you should expect to get roughly 30 pounds at harvest.  Obviously, this varies based on soil and growing conditions.

Seed, Dirt, Sunlight, Water.  All the components are there.

Planting potatoes (or any other seed) requires faith.  It is a lesson in delayed gratification.  Oh, we could have taken these seed potatoes and made some potato salad or (our favorite) Crash Hot Potatoes Recipe here!, but instead we're going to forgo that enjoyment and put them in the ground, exercising some faith.  Hopefully, we'll be rewarded for our work and patience and those little potatoes will multiply and replenish our potato bins.  Alternatively, we might not see good results from our labors, but regardless, we'll depend on our Creator.  We'll walk by faith, not by sight and we'll trust Him to provide.

“Peter Marshall, the great evangelical preacher, once said that we need "faith like potatoes" - plain, simple, real faith that will sustain us in our everyday lives. Whenever I pick up a potato I remember those words. That's the kind of faith I want. When we have faith and act on it, God will come through for us, no matter what our circumstances. God is King!” 
― Angus Buchan, Faith Like Potatoes: The Story of a Farmer Who Risked Everything for God