Got 'Taters!!!

[JimWWhite]

Well, we finally decided to see if there were any potatoes underneath the vines that had pretty much died back. Out of this one 4'x10'x12" box we took out a whopping 96 lbs of beautiful Kennebeck Reds. There was a white 5-gallon bucket along with this red bucket seen in the pic below full of them. And many of them were larger than I thought Kennebecks should be but they're solid and not pithy. Teresa has taken them in the house and has spread them out on a plastic sheet on the floor in the back of the sun-room to let them cure and dry before we dust them off and store them away in crates until we use them. We'll probably end up giving some away to our daughter Julie and the neighbor down the lane. He has all kinds of earth-moving equipment that he readily lends us so we have to keep him happy.

Anyways, here's the 'taters. They're pretty enough to make my Irish ancestors proud...

 

[lesa]

What a lovely thing!! Just pulled my garlic and had a few volunteer fingerlings mixed in. So, we had our first potatoes last night. I love growing potatoes- it is like a treasure hunt when you dig them. Enjoy!

 

[HotPepperQueen]

Awesome! I think I might go dig up a row of my potatoes...

 

[thistlebloom]

Those are pretty Jim! That's a pretty good yield too!

 

[digitS']

That's a wonderful yield, Jim!

You are going to have to explain that "Kennebec Red," tho'. I thought that variety only came in white. I do see that there's a company called Kennebec Potatoes that sells seed potatoes online. Is that where the seed was from?

And please, tell us about the "box" - If you will. Is the native soil a part of the mix?

Steve

 

[ninnymary]

Those are beauties! I also harvested mine and got 15 good size ones and 15 tiny ones from my 15 gal. container. I made the mistake of not mulching them and then overwater. I then mulched them but it was too late, I had already killed the plant. Next year, I'll know better.

Mary

 

[thistlebloom]

Mary, that's great for a container! I'll bet you could squeak out another harvest this summer, you should give it a try.

 

[JimWWhite]

That's a wonderful yield, Jim!

You are going to have to explain that "Kennebec Red," tho'. I thought that variety only came in white. I do see that there's a company called Kennebec Potatoes that sells seed potatoes online. Is that where the seed was from?

And please, tell us about the "box" - If you will. Is the native soil a part of the mix?

Steve

The Kennebeck Reds were from our local hardware and farm store here in Statesville, NC called Southern States Co-Op. They carry the seed potatoes every year. They always yield really well and as you can see most of them are uniform size of about a half pound each. The 'box' is just a 4'x10'x12" box made of treated lumber, the new stuff without the formaldehyde or arsenic. I took our lousy clay soil and tilled it up over and over again until I got a good loose soil and then mixed in a large bale of sphagnum peat moss, a bag of vermiculite, four bags of well composed cow manure, and some man-made top soil they make locally here from fall leaves, and some course creek sand. I spent an hour mixing it all up to get it uniform. Each year I add a little more manure and a little more of the man-made top soil to it. Basically I used the Square-Foot Gardener's recipe except I added the sand and manure to it. I went with raised beds because our local soil is this no good yellow clay mixture that is really only good for the first crop and then it's lifeless. About the only thing it will grow after that is pasture grass.

 

[JimWWhite]

We're going to put in more in mid to late August but they'll probably be fingerling potatoes this time. Last year I got a really good crop of multi-colored fingerlings just from a five pound bag of them I bought at Wal-Mart and let them go to 'seed'. They were just fingerling potatoes in the produce section and Teresa put them in a box on the floor in the pantry and within a few weeks they started sprouting eyes. This crop of Kennebecks fooled me because the vines weren't really thick like they were in the past. Kind of spotty and thin. But when we started pulling and digging we were really surprised by what we found. I'm sure my Irish ancestors are looking down with great pride...

 

[ninnymary]

Thistle, they were seed potatoes that I got at the nursery. I don't think they have them anymore. I'll have to call tomorrow. Can I just buy potatoes at the farmers market and plant those?

Mary