Early Potatoes

Week before last (January 13th) I pulled out the smallest of the potatoes that we didn't eat from our spring crop that was harvested back in May 2017.  Tricia kept them in a dark place for a long time and then we moved them into a small fridge that we have so that they would last until potato planting time.  It is hard to imagine that they are still around!  The potatoes have incredible shoots growing out of them.  They are just itching to grow, so I granted their wish.  Normally we plant LaSoda variety of red potatoes, but back in the spring, the feed store was out of LaSoda and all they had was Pontiac potatoes.  They grew fine and yielded well.  I still thing the LaSoda is a better variety.

Seed Potatoes saved from the 2017 potato crop

I worked up several rows with a shovel and a hoe.  It was a beautiful afternoon and it felt good to do some manual labor.  As always I love the smell of opening up soil.  With some baling twine, stakes and a measuring tape, I marked out the 16 foot rows with 24 inch row width and an 18 inch wide walk space between rows.  Then I went to the hen house and harvested some composted chicken manure.  I dug a four inch trench down the middle of the row and sprinkled the chicken litter in the trench and then covered it.

I dug holes on either side of the trench with a big knife.  The holes were 4 inches deep.  As the potatoes grow, the roots will get their fertilizer in time to produce nice new potatoes for us.

I make sure to position the potato so that the shoot is growing upward and then I begin to cover the potato up with dirt.

I usually try to plant potatoes around Valentine's day, so these are a month early.  We'll see how they do, especially since they went through all that cold weather last week when we got into the upper-teens.  I do have a back-up plan.  I'll check the feed store to see if they have LaSoda seed potatoes.  If they do, I'll buy a few pounds of those and plant them in the garden around Valentine's Day as "insurance" in the event these saved seed potatoes don't pan out.