Fall Spuds: The Good and the Bad

Earlier this fall, IN THIS POST we introduced an experiment we were trying for the first time: Fall potatoes in pots.  We'd never done this before as we normally plant them in the ground.  This year, I figured, due to lack of space in the garden, we would plant in pots.  This would enable us to move the pots in the event of an early frost.  We learned that lesson from an early freeze years before in which we lost our crop before they were ready.  

We harvested all of our potatoes this past week.  We'll show you the results today.  If you click the link above, you'll note that we planted 12 potatoes that we had stored successfully from the spring crop.  Those 12 potatoes were planted in 12 landscape pots under rich mulch that had composted down from 3 year old wood chip mulch.  I incorporated some composted chicken litter from the hen house for fertilizer.

Here is one of the plants we harvested.  You'll notice a brown material right at the base of the plant.  Those are coffee grounds.  I'll tell you a little story about that.  We read somewhere a natural remedy for fire ants is to spread some used coffee grounds.  The grounds provide compost as well as repel fire ants.  Or so they say.  This did NOT work in our Potato Pots.  It may have even caffeinated them, making them more aggressive in reproduction and growth. 

Back to the potato harvest.  I simply turned the pots over in a wagon to capture the mulch and then sifted through the mulch to pull out the potatoes.  (This resulted in being bit by the ants numerous times.)  Here are a few of the potatoes:

They were nice looking, new potatoes and we'll eat them up.  The photo below shows you the extensive fire any colony that was in the bottom of the pot.  The fire ants are always looking for high ground.  In times of rain and wet soil, the highest ground proved to be the soil in our Potato Pots.  We'll have to think this through better next time.

Here are a few more of the potatoes that we harvested as they are shown stored on our drying wagon.  This allows air flow to get around them and it is shady and cool, perfect conditions to store potatoes.

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I wish I would have weighed or counted the potatoes, but I forgot.  I was hoping for a better yield.  Oh, we definitely got more than the 12 potatoes that we planted, but if I had to guess, I'd say we got 36 nice sized potatoes and a bunch more small ones.  If I would have waited a couple more weeks, the small ones you see may have grown to golf-ball sized potatoes, but the ant infestation made me wonder if there were even going to be any potatoes.  In hindsight, I should have waited until the plants died or frost killed them.  In summary, a disappointing harvest, but we'll do it again next fall.  I have another nine months or so to learn about killing fire ants without pesticides.  It's probably not a good idea to eat potatoes laced with Amdro or Spectracide.  We've tried boiling water as an organic fire ant mound treatment option.  That works, but it would also kill the potato plants.