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Potatoes?????!!!!!
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Posted: May/15/2008 7:37 PM PST
I must admit that I am NOT the most patient person. Though gardening has helped me improve this flaw to some degree alas, I am STILL impatient. I planted potatoes some time ago, Yukon Golds. I had become irritated lately by the fact that I had not seen any flowers whatsoever on the potato plants! And to top it all off the plants had begun to look....well...blah! So I decided to dig them out and replant the area with something else. I got the pitch fork and got started. To my extreme surprise there were POTATOES!!!!!!!! About 13 lbs of them!!!! I only planted a little 3 lb bag to start with. I think that is a pretty good return. This variety was alot 'earlier' than the ones we tried last year. We had some of the smaller ones for dinner with butter and spices. The skins are so thin they can be just rubbed off. They were an absolutely delicious surprise for an admittedly impatient person. Please excuse the toes in the pic. We thought it might help to give a little size reference. 
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Posted: May/16/2008 3:14 AM PST
Nice harvest, thanks for the pics. I only hope mine do that well. I don't have luck with tators. Congrats to ya! |
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Posted: May/16/2008 5:06 AM PST
Wow!! Those look great.  About how long did you have them in the ground?? Did you buy starts from a nursery, or was that just a 3 lb. bag from the grocery store? I tried potatoes last year, but they were a big failure. They had scab, and didn't grow very well. 
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Posted: May/16/2008 8:38 AM PST
That is so cool!! Great Job!!  I remember learning from somewhere to harvest after the foliage dies down. I may have to create a new raised bed for 'taters, I just love them and the ones they sell at the grocery stores are already, er, "past their prime", to put it nicely, so I don't eat them very often anymore *pout* |
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Posted: May/16/2008 10:31 AM PST
Yes, dig/pull potatoes after the tops start to die. It takes a long time. If you want just a few small potatoes (Like when you're boiling CRAWFISH), you can dig around the bottom of the plants, steal the smaller potatoes, push the dirt back around the plant and let it continue to grow and make the other 'taters bigger. Done that lots! Oh, and after the potato plants start to come up, you can just add hay/ahem, Straw for you Northerners, around the plants, and the plant will make potatoes in the hay, and they'll be clean(er) when time to dig. |
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Posted: May/18/2008 7:38 AM PST
The potatoes were in the ground for almost 3 months. I planted a small bag of seed potatoes that were for planting. I thought it was strange that there were no flowers before the potatoes formed. Last year we had lots of flowers on each plant. They were a different variety though. I planted each seed potato just deep enough for their to be a 1/2 inch of soil covering it. When they started growing good we mounded up with good bagged compost/soil. It was so easy to get the potatoes out because the soil was not packed down at all. It was kind of expensive to use the bagged stuff for mounding it up, but the surrounding soil needed amendment so I was just trying to think ahead. After I dug up the potatoes I mixed it all in together and replanted with some hot pepper babies. |
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Posted: May/18/2008 7:54 AM PST
Thanks. That is very helpful.
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Posted: May/19/2008 2:57 AM PST
Great job, Angel. As they say, You done good! |
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Posted: May/19/2008 6:00 PM PST
Here in Louisiana we mostly plant "red" potatoes, and yeah, 3 months is about right. Planting time is usually around Valentine's Day, and dug in May when the green beans are making (like now). I don't know anything about Yukon gold or white potatoes-but you would think they would be about the same. We plant a little deeper, also. |
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