Planting Potatoes

This is my fifth year of backyard gardening, and for many of those years, I was experimenting in two ways.  First, I was trying to see

what grew well for me. It makes no sense trying to grow a crop that is just not suited for your soil or climate or gardening style/skills. Second, I needed to find out what my family would eat from my garden.  As I have learned, there's no sense growing a bunch of hot peppers if nobody is eating them.

For three years, I avoided growing potatoes.  There's nothing glamorous about potatoes.  The plants are like stumpy unattractive tomatoes.  Plus they are available at all times in the grocery store.  Last year, I received a gift of seed potatoes.  I planted 4 varieties, and got great results.  They were a low maintenance crop for me, and since they harvest in mid-summer, I was able to replant that same ground with a differnt crop for fall.  Most importantly, my family loves potatoes.  For about 3 months, we had garden-grown potatoes as a side dish about once a week.  It was a sad day when we had to buy spuds from the store again.  

My seed potatoes went in the ground about 2 weeks ago.  A little over one-sixth of the garden is potatoes, which should keep us in potatoes for 4 months, I hope.  Above are the varieties I planted.  I bought 11 pounds of seed potatoes...an investment of about $17.  This should conservatively produce 60 pounds of spuds at harvest.  Perhaps I'll weigh them to see.

After hanging around my house in a fairly dark but warm place, these potatoes have started to sprout and are ready to be cut up for planting.

I cut them in the morning on a sunny day, and let the cut edges dry and a bit of a crust forms.  These were ready to be planted by late afternoon.

I carry them to a prepared seed bed, meaning I've removed the leaf cover, weeded if needed, and raked it level.  I don't actually dig holes when I plant potatoes...

I took a sturdy metal scoop, slid it into the ground, pulled it back to open up a cresent shaped cavity, and popped in a seed tater and slid out the scoop.  Then I made sure it was covered with soil and did it again.  And again.  And again.  I could go on, but I won't.  After I was done, I covered the seed beds back up with a layer of leaves, to keep weeds down and to keep the soil moist.

Very soon, shoots push out of the soil.  As soon as they hit daylight, they develop leaves and begin their work of turning air, water, and sunlight into delicious roots for french fries, potato salad, and mashed taters.  Potatoes are even kind enough to let you know exactly when to harvest them; at some point this summer, the visible parts of the plant will appear to be dying.  That's when you dig up your spuds.