Getting Ready to Plant Potatoes

If the weather cooperates, I usually try to plant potatoes around Valentine's Day.  I asked Tricia to keep her watchful eye for when Seed Potatoes arrive at the Feed Store for sale.  Sure enough, she showed up with a box of seed potatoes - both red and white ones.

We had a nice crop of potatoes last year and we've been successful in storing them for months with little to no spoilage, simply by not washing them after harvest and putting them in stacked milk crates that allow good airflow, and then storing them in a cool, dark place.  This just happens to be a little closet we call the 'mud room.' We keep the door shut and there is an air conditioning vent that keeps it nice and cool.

In a decision that may prove to be in error, I asked her to go back and get some more seed potatoes. I put them on the scale and we have a hair over 11 pounds of seed potatoes.  Although I can't remember, last year I think we planted between 3 and 6 pounds of Pomme de Terre (Apples of the Earth)!  I assure you, if we plant too many this year, they won't go to waste.

Seed Potatoes from Parsley's Feed Store in Jennings

Last year we were able to save some potatoes that we harvested from our Spring potato crop to use as seed potatoes in planting our inaugural Fall potato crop.  I learned that we planted a little bit late. For 2015, I'll get them in the ground sooner.

Now you can see that the seed potatoes have some nice, healthy eyes growing.  Each eye will grow its own potato plant.  Although you can plant an entire potato, I think it's best to cut them up and that was my task night before last.

The Eyes of the Potato

All you need is a sharp knife and a watchful eye.  The goal of this endeavor is to cut the potato up so that each chunk of potato has an eye on it.  Depending on the size of the spud and the number of eyes on it, I'll cut them into as few as two pieces or as many as four.  The trick is, you don't want to cut the eye itself, so when you slice the potato, you spin it around the backside to ensure you aren't cutting one.  You also want the chunks to be of a good size as the growing potato plant uses the potato itself as 'food' to grow on.  Cutting it too small would mean the young plant wouldn't have enough nutrition to grow well.

I cut this one in two pieces.  Can you spot the eyes on each side?  Each piece of potato below will develop it's own distinct plant, yielding a nice bounty of delicious new potatoes that we'll enjoy cooked with butter and fresh picked green beans in about 3 and a half months.  <Stomach growls at the thought of this event>

The Eyes have it

You don't want to immediately go and put the cut up seed potatoes in the ground. That would result in some of them rotting.  After cutting them up, I'll leave them in a box and stir them gently for about a week or until the cut pieces develop a 'scab.' That simply means the fresh cut has healed and dried. I counted them up and once I finished, I had 117 individual potato chunks to plant!  Not all of them will grow, but the majority will, and that is a lot of potatoes.  I'll normally dig up young potato plants and replant them in the gaps in the row where the seed potatoes didn't sprout to ensure I have an efficient use of garden area.

Curing, cut-up Seed Potatoes

I'll watch these closely until the perfect day arrives to plant them.  According to the 2015 Farmer's Almanac, on February 14 - 15, it says "Any root crops that can be planted now will do well." Looking at the box of cut up potatoes naturally makes me a little hungry.  I could just as easily take the box inside, slice them up, and eat them.  But that's a little lesson in delayed gratification you learn in gardening (and life): Hopefully, by foregoing satisfaction and enjoyment now, you'll experience an eight to tenfold reward in the future at harvest time.  We DID see that last year.  I wish I could say the same about my investments over the years...  Oh well.

Now we just wait and see if we have good planting weather on the 14th or 15th.

Almost time for Potato Planting

We usually try to plant our seed potatoes around Valentine's Day.  No particular reason, although I guess you could say we LOVE new potatoes cooked with some fresh green beans.  While at Parsley's (our local feed store in town), Tricia purchased some seed potatoes.  Most of them are red potatoes, but she also put a few white potatoes in the box for good measure.  I kept them in the utility room for a few days and allowed the 'eyes' to sprout a little bit.  You can see a few sprouts on the potatoes in the box below.

Seed 'Taters we purchased at Parsley's Feed Store

To add to those seed potatoes, we actually had the contents of the box below that are the remnants of the 2013 potato crop that were too small for eating.  They are all sprouted and we will put this in the ground as well.  If you look at the bigger red potato in the crate below that has the big, fat sprouts on it, Tricia found this one in a strange place.  The other day she went to put on a pair of my ropers (boots) and felt something in the toe.  She quickly pulled her foot out and reached in and pulled out this potato.  That potato is a survivor and didn't get eaten.  I'm figuring it will make some nice potatoes for us this year.

Seed potatoes from last year's crop

Last night Benjamin wanted to wrestle, but before we wrestled we had to cut up our seed potatoes.  I wanted to teach him how it's done.  He's helped me plant them before, but never cut them up.  Sometimes I want to do everything, but I need to step back and teach him how to do different things so he'll build up different skills.  Many times it is easier and quicker to do things yourself, but by doing that, you rob the next generation of knowledge.  In the old days kids apprenticed or learned a trade from their father, but too many times these days we make things easy on them by doing things for them instead and it comes back to bite them in the backside when they don't know 'diddly squat' about much anything.

The reason that you want to cut up potatoes is that one potato can give you numerous potato plants.  Every eye will yield a new plant, so you can cut off chunks of the potato that have an eye, being real careful not to damage the sprouted eye. Here you can see that Benjamin is slicing the potato right between two sprouted eyes.

Cutting up seed potatoes

It's usually best to flip the potato over before you make your cut to make sure that you aren't cutting off a sprout.  Sometimes you can get four or five different cuts out of one seed potato.

Slicing and dicing

In the end, we have a nice box of cut seed potatoes and Benjamin learned a new skill that maybe he'll show his son one day.  We'll put these aside for a few days so that the cut pieces have a chance to "scab" over. I've heard that if you plant them immediately, it heightens the chance that the potato will rot in the ground before it has an opportunity to grow.

We're looking at the beginnings of the 2014 crop

I think that cutting up seed potatoes is a good lesson for us.  Many times you'll hear farmers and gardeners say, "Don't eat your seed."  See, these potatoes would've made a nice meal, boiled and then mashed with some butter, a little garlic maybe, with a sprinkling of grated cheddar cheese and green onions on top.  But cutting up perfectly fine potatoes for seed is an exercise in faith.  We're not going to eat our seed.  We are sacrificing enjoyment now for a greater reward later - delayed gratification, they call it.

Hopefully, this foregoing of benefit now will yield an abundant return when we harvest potatoes in May and see that this tray of seed potatoes has given us buckets and buckets of potatoes that we will be able to enjoy for months. We'll see in a few months if this was a worthwhile endeavor!