Diggin' Spuds

The back pasture around our house and the side yard was once a rice field.  There is an old deep water irrigation well shaft in the woods in the back of the house along with evidence of irrigation canals that transferred water for flooding rice fields from the well head to the fields.  A lot of the land, sadly, has been subdivided and now grows houses instead of food and fiber.

Fields that were once in rice have several things in common.  The ground is compacted, hard and has a hardpan that holds water.  It is almost devoid of earthworms.  The first year we expanded our garden from the garden to the side yard, I knew we had our work cut out for us.  I fed the soil bunches of organic matter, including composted leaves and cow manure and used mulch heavily.

Slowly, the earthworms returned.  Slowly, the ground became less compacted.  I normally plant all our potatoes in this bed and zinnias come up volunteer to beautify the spot.  I alternate blackeyed peas and purple hull peas to set nitrogen and grow protein.  Here is the bed.  I planted 8 pounds of seed potatoes in this bed.  At the end of this post, I'll let you know how the yield was.

Generally, when the potatoes are ready, I use a digging fork.  It's essentially a pitchfork with straight, thick tines.  It is a great implement for turning soil.  I find it the best thing for digging potatoes.  We rake the mulch back from around the base of the potato plant and dig in.

We turn the soil over to expose new potatoes!  You have to dig around with your hands to get them all.  I messed up a few times and stabbed through some big nice potatoes with the digging fork.  They didn't go to waste, though.  We ate them up with fresh green beans.

Digging up fresh potatoes from the soil is a rewarding experience.  The bright, red potatoes contrasted against the dull, brown soil highlights the treasure we find when we dig.  The boys, when they were younger, loved to follow me and dig through the soil to expose potatoes.  It was like digging for buried treasure, they'd say.

One thing we learned early on is that if you want your potatoes to store longer - don't wash them.  We bring them inside dirty and store them in milk crates so that they get air flow through them.  We wash them as we remove a few to cook.

I harvested in three separate days.

The total yield was better than last year, but still disappointing.  Out of the 8 pounds of seed potatoes we planted, we harvested 41 pounds of potatoes.  That's a five-fold increase, so I'm not complaining, but we've had better harvests.  I'll keep feeding the soil.  Next year we'll have a bumper crop!  (That's optimism spoken like a true gardener!)