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. 

A Pleasant Surprise

In an earlier post, we lamented about the state of our potato crop.  The plants never grew tall and lush and green as in prior years.  They had a sickly yellowish color for the entire growing season, and they never bloomed.  I drove by other gardeners' potato crops and coveted the health and vigor of their plants.  I had mentioned I have a pretty good idea that I damaged them with the application of too much chicken litter.  Too much of a good thing is detrimental, when it comes to gardening.

It was hard to fathom that I had done this to my crop after it started off so well.  When I would walk outside, I would intentionally avert my eyes from the disaster in the side yard.  Today, I told my wife, "We are going to wait until the late afternoon when the sun casts long shadows and it's a little cooler.  Then we'll harvest what we can from the potatoes.

We started digging with a digging fork.  It's like a pitch fork, but with wide prongs.  It easily digs into the soil.  We lift the plant from the loosened soil and red potatoes dangle from the roots.  These potatoes are the LaSoda variety.  A variety that does well here.

We have a forty foot row in the side yard that I have planted with four plants per row all the way down.  In all, I had 122 potato plants.  They were mulched deep with wood chips to retain soil moisture and prohibit weed competition.  It also aids in mitigating soil compaction.  We worked our way down the row in the late afternoon.  The potatoes weren't plentiful, but they were better than I had anticipated.

At the end of the row, we had a decent amount in the wagon.

If the plants had been healthy, no telling how much we could have produced.  Most plants had two potatoes.  Some had only one and some had as many as five.

I decided I would weigh them.  First I weighed the empty bucket.  It was 2 pounds.  Then I filled the bucket with potatoes and weighed them and subtracted the weight of the empty bucket.  

When I had finished weighing, we had a grand total of 49 pounds of potatoes on 122 plants.  That's almost a half pound of potatoes per plant.  I googled and found that the average yield should be between 1 and 5 pounds per plant.  So a rather dismal harvest, BUT we choose to look on the bright side.  We thought we weren't going to get ANY!

I put them on the curing rack.  They are in the shade and under a fan on wire mesh (hardware cloth).  I'll leave them here for about 10 days and then I'll bring them inside and store them in the dark.

Next year, I promise to be more reserved in my use of chicken litter for fertilizer.  I'm thinking about taking a soil test as well.  We'll see if we can improve the yield next year over this year.

Spring's 'A Comin'

Yes, it's still a little cold out there, and rainy.  The weatherman shows temps in the 30's later this week.  Too early to be thinking about the spring garden?  I don't think so!  In fact, I went by our local feed store last week and picked up 10 pounds of La Soda potatoes for seed.  Tricia had put in our order and they saved them for us.  We ask them to hold some back as they usually go quickly once they come in.

I talked to a neighbor at the feed store who was walking out with his box of potatoes as I was walking in to get mine.  We joked that all we need now is some dry weather.  If we'd put them in the ground now, they would rot with all the rain we've been getting.

After getting home, we lit a fire in the fireplace and kicked our feet up.

But we couldn't just rest.  No sir, there's work to be done.  We have 10 pounds of seed potatoes to cut.

While sitting in front of a roaring fire on a cold, rainy day.  I cut up the potatoes, trying my best to cut each one into chunks with an eye in each piece.  Each one of those will grow it's own plant and make numerous potatoes.  

Once they were all cut up, I spread them out and put them on the top shelf in our closet.  It's the warmest place I could think of.  Up there, they'll scab over and hopefully each eye will begin to grow.  In about ten days, if the weather cooperates, I'll plant them in the garden ground.  One thing I've learned is that the very best gardens are those you dream up on cold, dreary days.  Whether the garden comes to fruition or not is another story...

The Spring Potato Crop is in the Ground

I like to research interesting facts about different crops we plant in the garden.  For potatoes, I learned the following from www.Potatogoodness.com:

In October 1995, the potato became the first vegetable to be grown in space. NASA and the University of Wisconsin, Madison, created the technology with the goal of feeding astronauts on long space voyages, and eventually, feeding future space colonies.

I don't know about growing potatoes in space, but we have always grown them in our garden.  Potatoes are an easy crop to grow if the weather is somewhat agreeable.  They don't like wet soil, however, and we've had times in which they rotted in the ground.  We usually try to plant them around Valentine's Day.  This year we actually got them in the ground on February 16th.

I got the weed eater and trimmed all the winter grass growing in the potato bed down to the ground.  There were a few turnips in the bed that were about the size of a baseball that we harvested and cut up and fed to the cows.  When the cows see us working, they always come near the fence knowing they'll be recipients of something to eat!

Beginning to work up the potato bed

The potato, from the perennial Solanum tuberosum, is the world’s fourth largest food crop, following rice, wheat, and maize. The Inca Indians in Peru were the first to cultivate potatoes around 8,000 BC to 5,000 B.C.

Last week we cut up our seed potatoes to let them scab over.  We also had some potatoes left over from the spring crop that we'll plant.  We turned the soil over with shovels, digging deep and then we used a hoe to chop the soil.  Finally, we used a rock rake to smooth out the seed bed.  The soil was perfect and easy to work.  The composted leaves and hay we've been amending is helping out.

Russ dropping seed potatoes into the holes

The LSU planting guide calls for planting seed potatoes 4 inches deep and 12 inches apart.  For the size of our potato bed, this gives us perfect room for three potato plants wide.  I dug the holes, and Russ and Tricia helped me plant by dropping the potatoes in the holes.  Before covering them up, Tricia dropped a tablespoon of organic fertilizer in each hole with the potatoes.  This will give them a little boost to get them growing.

Plant with the eyes facing upward

The potato bed is about four feet wide by 45 feet long.  With two of us digging and Tricia planting and applying fertilizer, the work went quickly on Saturday afternoon.  If you look down the row, you can see a stick in the middle.  This marks the spot where we switched from cut up seed potatoes to whole potatoes planted left over from the Spring 2018 crop.  I want to do a field trial to see which ones are more productive.  The cut up potatoes are LaSoda variety, while the ones north of the stick are the Pontiac variety.

Benjamin was working, so he couldn't take part in the potato planting, but Tricia, Russ, and I felt good about getting the potatoes planted.  It is nice when the family can work together on a task.  It is a rewarding experience when you can lean on your shovel at the end of the day and look over the work you accomplished.  Satisfying.  Gratifying.

When the potatoes pop up out of the ground, I'll add some chicken litter from our hen house.  Then I will mulch around each plant with hay to discourage weed growth and to also preserve soil moisture.  One day in May we'll hopefully harvest and enjoy the fruits of our labors.

Saturday is Potato Planting Day

"The same boiling water that softens potatoes hardens eggs.  It's all about what you're made of not your circumstances." 

I am looking forward to the weekend.  One more day.  I have big plans on Saturday.  I'm going to put some potatoes in the ground.  I've already checked the weather.  It looks like it will be cloudy, but I should be able to plant.  While Tricia was at the feed store picking up some Dairy Ration for the cows, she purchased some seed potatoes for me.  These are the LaSoda variety.

A week before planting I always cut them up and let them "scab" over to keep them from rotting in the ground.

Some planting guides tell you that you can plant the potatoes whole.  You certainly can, but I like to cut the potatoes into chunks with each chunk having an eye.  Each eye will grow a potato plant.

The eyes have it!

But those aren't our only seed potatoes.  Check out what's in the bucket!

That is a wild looking sight!  What is it, you ask?  Those are some potatoes we grew in the Spring of 2018 and harvested in May.  We kept some small ones and rather than rotting, they sprouted.  Since May they've patiently waited to be put in the ground.  Saturday, their wait will be over.

Last year the feed store was out of La Soda potatoes.  These are Pontiac potatoes.  They'll do just fine.  I found that they didn't produce quite as much in yield as the La Sodas, but that's okay.  For these, I won't cut them up.  They are all shriveled up, but they have lots of sprouts and a real will to survive.

I read an inspiring story from HERE about an egg, a potato, and some coffee.  I'll post it here:

Once upon a time, a daughter complained to her father that her life was miserable and that she didn’t know how she was going to make it. She was tired of fighting and struggling all the time. It seemed just as one problem was solved, another one soon followed. Her father, a chef, took her to the kitchen. He filled three pots with water and placed each on a high fire.

Once the three pots began to boil, he placed potatoes in one pot, eggs in the second pot and ground coffee beans in the third pot. He then let them sit and boil, without saying a word to his daughter. The daughter moaned and impatiently waited, wondering what he was doing. After twenty minutes he turned off the burners. He took the potatoes out of the pot and placed them in a bowl. He pulled the eggs out and placed them in a bowl. He then ladled the coffee out and placed it in a cup.

Turning to her, he asked. “Daughter, what do you see?” “Potatoes, eggs and coffee,” she hastily replied.

“Look closer”, he said, “and touch the potatoes.” She did and noted that they were soft.

He then asked her to take an egg and break it. After pulling off the shell, she observed the hard-boiled egg.

Finally, he asked her to sip the coffee. Its rich aroma brought a smile to her face.

“Father, what does this mean?” she asked.

He then explained that the potatoes, the eggs and coffee beans had each faced the same adversity-the boiling water. However, each one reacted differently. The potato went in strong, hard and unrelenting, but in boiling water, it became soft and weak. The egg was fragile, with the thin outer shell protecting its liquid interior until it was put in the boiling water. Then the inside of the egg became hard. However, the ground coffee beans were unique. After they were exposed to the boiling water, they changed the water and created something new.

“Which one are you?” he asked his daughter. “When adversity knocks on your door, how do you respond? Are you a potato, an egg, or a coffee bean?”

Moral: In life, things happen around us, things happen to us, but the only thing that truly matters is how you choose to react to it and what you make out of it. Life is all about leaning, adopting and converting all the struggles that we experience into something positive.

Prepping Seed Potatoes for the 2017 Crop

Tricia normally goes to the feed store every Friday morning to purchase Dairy Ration for the cows and goat, alfalfa, hen scratch, and the occasional bucket, rope or other item for the animals.  This past Friday, I sent her on a mission to come back with seed potatoes so that I could cut them and allow them to scab over so I could plant.  The mission was NOT accomplished.  The feed store was out of seed potatoes.  We had been beat to the punch.

Not to worry.  They proprietor had more seed potatoes on order and they would be in this week.  Tricia went back yesterday and picked up 15 pounds of seed potatoes. Looking at last year's crop that you can read about by clicking here, we will be hard-pressed to out-do the production of that crop.  The statistics in that post's second to last paragraph were very interesting to me.  Based on last year's figures, every pound of seed potatoes will produce 10 pounds of potatoes.

Here are 15 pounds of seed potatoes.  These should produce 150 pounds of potatoes if all goes according to plan.  Can you see the 'eyes' beginning to show themselves?

Last year we planted Lasoda Red Potatoes and Yukon Gold Potatoes.  I was really pleased with the Lasoda varieties' yield.  While the Yukon Gold variety didn't produce as well as the Lasoda, they stored really well.  I was looking forward to planting the La Soda variety again this year.  Well, wouldn't you know it, the Feed Store was unable to get their hands on any and instead, the variety they got was the Pontiac variety.  As the name suggests, they were developed in Michigan, while the La Soda variety was developed in Louisiana in 1948.  I guess we'll see how this northern cultivar grows down here.

The Pontiac had some nice eyes bulging.  I inspected each and they appeared to be in good shape with plenty of eyes.

Now you could plant each seed potato whole, but it wouldn't be very efficient.  I like to cut them up into chunks, ensuring that each chunk has at least one eye.  Each eye will grow a plant and each plant will produce some nice potatoes. So I grabbed a knife and started cutting.

Before too long I had two trays full of cut up seed potatoes.  But they are not quite ready for planting yet.

I like to leave them outside and let them scab over.  This allows the cut portion to heal and develop a hard protective layer.  I was taught by my grandpa to do this or you run the risk of the potatoes rotting in the ground.  I'll check them each day to see if the cut end has hardened and perhaps they'll be ready to plant this weekend.

As a little bonus, I do have some La Soda potatoes in the potato bin left over from last year's harvest in early May.  I'll plant them.  Even though they are small, they have long sprouts.  I think it will be interesting to plant the Pontiacs and some La Sodas and compare the yield.  It was great weather today. Hopefully the weather will hold as is through the weekend so that we can get them in the ground