The Potato Harvest - 2024

I had been waiting for the perfect time to dig potatoes.  The perfect time never comes.  We got out to the garden in the side yard last week before all the rains started to dig them up.  We use some garden forks to do the job.  They are shown two photos lower.  They are like pitch forks, but with thicker tines.  Here is what's left of the potato patch.  The potato plants have long since matured and sort of melted into the mulch.  It was a little hard to find where they were, and as a result, I forked right through a couple of them.  For the most part, however, we had no issues.

We worked our way all the way down the 45 foot potato patch.  My wife helped me dig them.  She also covered the soil back up with mulch once the potatoes were dug up.  That keeps the weeds from overtaking the patch.  You can see the digging forks we use right below. You can also see the wagon with the potatoes in it.  

We were disappointed in the yield.  I think we mostly got two potatoes per plant.  That's not very good, in my opinion.  The potato plants started off good, but the leaves soon turned yellow and they never thrived.  In typical day late and a dollar short fashion, I took soil samples mid-way through the crop and just got the results back.  The side yard garden is "optimal" or "extremely high" in all areas, except one.  That would be sulfur.  The soil is LOW in sulfur.  I looked at the symptoms of low sulfur in potatoes and its just what we experienced.

NOW I know what to do to experience a bumper crop of taters next year!  On the bright side, we are going to be eating some potatoes this year.  And if you could see Tricia's face, you'd see she's happy, because the potatoes are all dug and the job is done.

Although I wish the wagon was full, they are nice looking new potatoes in a wide variety of sizes.  You can see in the lower left hand side of the photo one of the potatoes that I stuck the digging fork right through.  It won't go to waste.  I'll wash it up and we'll eat it.

Here's a nice potato that is freshly dug.  It fits nicely in the palm of my hand.  We use potatoes this size to make a recipe called Crash Hot Potatoes.  It simply contains rosemary, kosher salt, black pepper, olive oil and parmesan.  Boy, is it good!

But this size potato right here is the cat daddy.  If you get a handful of these and cut them in half and cook them with butter with a mess of snap beans, well, that's good eating!  I think that will probably be on the menu at the Marriage Supper of the Lamb as a side dish.

The potato harvest is in.  Literally in.  We brought them into the parlor to begin curing on our rack right beside the onions, because why the heck not!

I'll be planting purple hull peas, sunflowers and zinnias in the garden in the side yard and will figure out how to amend the soil there with a proper amount of sulfur.  We'll try to plant a fall crop of potatoes to see if we realize better yields.

Cool Beans!

This is the time of year that gardening is so rewarding.  The weather is still relatively cool.  It is not oppressively hot and humid yet.  The healthy green of the leaves is truly something to behold.  I stagger my planting of green beans to spread out the yield throughout the year after learning a technique from a good friend who used to go to church at our church prior to moving.  He told me that his Dad would plant snap beans staggered so that he had a green been harvest from spring through the fall.  Good idea!

As you can see there are some nice blooms on these Blue Lake Variety green beans.  I have some Contender variety planted as well, but the Blue Lake (named after the region in California where they were developed) beans are further along.

Pulling back the foliage from this neighboring plant, you can see beans of various sizes.  These green beans are prolific and require picking, once they start producing, just about every day so that you get them while they are still young and tender.

And here is the point where the dividends in the garden start paying off.  I pulled out some fresh-picked green beans and, it just so happens, the finest accompaniment to green beans were just harvested and ready.  I'm talking about new potatoes.  I just harvested these last week.  I pulled out the small ones - those a little smaller than a golf ball, to cook with the green beans.  

Fresh green beans, new potatoes, butter and a little salt.  You've got yourself a delicious side dish!

As they keep coming in, we'll eat some, give some away, and blanch and freeze the rest.  I'll also get another row planted in order to keep the bountiful green bean harvests coming in.

Harvesting Potatoes with my Boys

From the day we plant our seed potatoes (around mid February each year), we eagerly anticipate the day that we harvest them.  We watch them as they grow, noting when they bloom and then when the plant itself starts dying back, letting you know it is time to get the shovel and call the potato digging crew.  Harvesting potatoes is a fun job.  It is kind of like digging for buried treasure.  Since potatoes grow beneath the soil, you never know what you have until you put the shovel in the ground and turn the soil over.

The potato plants were the biggest and healthiest that they've ever been this year and I attribute that to the composted chicken litter that a friend gave me.  I incorporated that into the garden and it really grew some beautiful plants.  But as stated earlier, the success of a potato crop lies below the ground.  Let's see what we've got:

Pay dirt!!!

The first shovel unearthed a nice bounty of beautiful potatoes of all different shapes and sizes.  My job is to dig them and Russ and Benjamin are spotters.  As I turn the soil over, they look for potatoes and throw them into a crate.  These new potatoes are just the perfect size.  After just a few hills were dug, we knew that it was going to be a nice harvest.

Varied sizes of new potatoes

I planted mostly red potatoes, but also planted a few Yukon Gold potatoes for variety. The red potatoes proved to be the better producers this year as they have in previous years.  The soil was so rich and easy to turn over, thanks to the compost and organic matter.  With each passing year, you can see visible results that the soil is getting better and better.  This guy gives evidence to the health of the soil:

Earthworms & Healthy Soil

Here is a photo of the process, we me digging and Benjamin and Russ gathering the potatoes into a bucket. Crocs and socks aren't exactly fashionable, I know, but when you are digging potatoes, you really aren't trying to impress anyone!

You've got to be real careful not to cut the potatoes in half when you're digging.  I messed up on a few and we'll eat those right away.  Sometimes you have to turn the soil over several times to make sure that you don't leave any potatoes in the ground. If you do, it is not a real big deal.  The potatoes left in the ground will re-sprout and grow new potatoes for you.

Digging as much as we can before the sun goes down

Tricia took a picture of us when we were done for the afternoon.  In all we had to break up the harvest into 3 separate days as the daylight ran out on us each afternoon after work.  Even ol' Big Boy came and joined us for the picture.

The Potato Harvesters

There was no Potato Famine at Our Maker's Acres Family Farm this year.  Our harvest was bountiful, thank the Good Lord!  In fact last night I posted about our harvest of Italian Roma Beans and I mentioned that we'd couple those beans with some of our harvest from the blog post tonight with what might be the world's most perfect side dish.  And here it is - Italian Roma Green Beans steamed in butter with fresh-dug new potatoes!

Talk about good!

Rice & Gravy with smothered steak and fresh green beans and side of new potatoes is a meal fit for a king, I tell ya!

Mmmmmm!

At the end of the day, we had a good time uncovering some nice potatoes from 4 1/2 rows.  The boys enjoy harvesting them and so do I.  Now the potato patch looks so barren, so empty, and it is, but I'll add some composted chicken litter that I just removed from beneath the roosts in the chicken coop and we'll plant some more beans in this very spot.  It won't be barren for long.

Ready for a new crop to be sown...

Tomorrow I'll show you our entire harvest of potatoes.  Well, at least those that we haven't devoured yet. We learned last year that if you don't wash the potatoes and you store them in a dark place in a crate like a milk crate that allows for air flow, potatoes will last for a long, long time.