The Spuds Are Up!

We planted a 45 foot row of La Soda red potatoes.  The row has 4 potatoes planted (wide) and 34 (long) giving us 136 potato plants.  I planted them as soon as the cuts scabbed over, so the eyes were not well-developed.  It took longer than I thought for them to finally start peeking through the ground.  Here's one just popping out with what looks like the 5 o'clock shadow on my chin growing on its leaves.  My whiskers are becoming more and more white, ha ha!

As they are popping out of the ground, in the absence of rainfall, I try to get out there with a hose and shower the ground quickly to keep the soil moist.

The leaves open and the sunshine does its thing, causing green growth and a happy plant.  Buried an inch beneath the seed potato is a sprinkling of composted chicken litter.  Once those roots hit that, they'll really take off.  Tricia and I have worked to keep the potato bed weed-free.  Every time we walk past it, we pull out weeds.  

In another week, I'll carry wagon-loads of decomposed wood chips and use a pitch fork to spread out a four inch layer of chips on the bed and around each plant.  That will do several things.  It will help the soil beneath the plant moist and reduce the need to water.  It will also act as a barrier to keep the weeds from growing and stealing fertility from the soil.  Finally, the decomposed wood chips become part of the soil, enriching it and adding organic matter.

I think my love for gardening all started back in childhood with Irish Potatoes.  It was 1976 and I was ten years old.  We had just moved from town out to the country.  There was a little strip of land near the neighbor's pasture which allowed the sunlight to shine through the tall pine trees that were on the property.  I moved many pine knots that were all over the land and stacked them in piles.  It was doing this that I was first introduced to the black widow spider.  I was very careful handling the pine knots as they loved to hide on them.  The black widows had a glossy black body with a bright red hour glass shape on their belly.

My grandfather helped me till up the land and Dad ran PVC water line out there.  We planted potatoes among other vegetables.  I can still remember digging up the plants and unearthing beautiful new potatoes.  My Mom cooked them up.  Things always taste better when you grow them.  Forty seven years later and I'm still planting potatoes.  Still in awe of watching things grow and produce a bountiful harvest that you can enjoy at the supper table.