How are the potatoes?

[digitS']

The harvesting the potato patch began yesterday.

It is not starting off quite the way I expected. The new-to-me Adora was planted at the shady end of the potato bed. I thought that they would have a longer season down there and planted, what I thought was, my earliest-to-harvest, Yukon Gold, at the other end.

I like to slowly work my way thru the bed and have new potatoes over the course of about a month that way. Actually, I robbed a few of the Yukons about a week ago and that is partly what prompted me to start diggin'. I'd prefer not to do the robbing of healthy plants but my resistance was weakening .

Anyway, the Adora were dying back. They are little potatoes, little plants, and were growing in morning shade. I didn't expect much from them and wasn't really disappointed that there was only a little over 10 pounds of spuds in the Adora's 20 square feet of the bed.

The other varieties have to do a little better tho'. I got 60 pounds out of 100 square feet last year. Still, I think I'm on my way to a fairly good potato harvest.

How about in your garden? How are the potatoes?

Steve

 

[GrowsLotsaPeppers]

You're in what I'd thought would be potato heaven. But those yields seem pretty small.

What does the rest of your garden do?

 

[chris09]

Steve,

I like to think that mine are doing well but they are no way done growing yet.

Kennebec plant that I took a peak to see how they were doing and thing look not bad.

Out of this row of Kennebec.

I dug this Potato plant as you can see they are no where done growing and still have the seed potato attached. I believe I counted 15 potatoes. (not including the little pea size)

Chris

 

[digitS']

This isn't the part of the country that has the Idaho baking potato (not even the Washington baking potato ). Seed potatoes are sometimes grown hereabouts. Not potato heaven.

Probably, an average yield for potatoes is about 250 cwt. per acre. So, 25,000 pounds per acre. Altho', I know that russets can sometimes yield over 400 cwt. per acre in "potato heaven."

An acre is 43,560 square feet. My 100 square feet is 1/435.6 of that.

The 60 pounds last year would be 26,136 pounds if I was harvesting an acre of these early varieties.

Steve

ETA: I noticed in those earlier pictures that you had those good-looking plants, Chris!

 

[ducks4you]

Thanks, chris09, for the pic. I am waiting for mine to start dying back and it helps to see what your foliage looks like. I'm VERY ANXIOUS because the greens look SO HEALTHY!! I have 14 plants. They are in a well-drained, never pooling water location.
Question: Can I wait too long and have my potatoes rot in the ground?

 

[chris09]

Thanks, chris09, for the pic. I am waiting for mine to start dying back and it helps to see what your foliage looks like. I'm VERY ANXIOUS because the greens look SO HEALTHY!! I have 14 plants. They are in a well-drained, never pooling water location.
Question: Can I wait too long and have my potatoes rot in the ground?

I all was leave mine in the ground till the tops die back..
If you get too anxious you can dig one up and see how there doing and have some "New" potatoes.

Chris

 

[digitS']

I am continuing to bungle my potato harvest. Since I started at end of the bed I had expected to require the longest season . . . I continued from that direction and dug up another 10 feet this week.

Unfortunately, that variety was the Russet Norkotah. They would have gone quite a few more weeks. Oh well, one can really dig potatoes any old time - problem is, yield won't be as high if they are dug too early.

Nevertheless, I got over 23 pounds out of that 10 feet.

I'll move on to the reds this week and finish with the Yukon Golds which was where I'd intended to start way back when I planted the bed in the spring.

I am digging this bed 5' at a time because I'm filling the trench in behind me with plant debris.

This is all part of my "composting in place" program for the year. I've done this often in the past but also had about 3 other composting techniques going on. Simplify, simplify, simplify . . . I'm just burying appropriate material in the garden so far this year, the heck with compost piles!

Once again, I'll be planting bok choy seed in the 8" of soil that covers the compostables. That worked well enuf last year and I don't believe the seed went in until a week or so into August. This year, I'll try sowing the bok choy during the last week in July and then continuing as the soil settles behind my potato bungling over the next few weeks.

Oh, I harvested the wheat this week also but the soybeans haven't even begun to flower.

Steve, commodity farmer

 

[bills]

I planted some spuds in containers this year as I heard that they work well, also planted a rown in the garden bed. The container greens have pretty well all turned brown and wilting, so I think I will dump some of them and see what was produced. Still a few greens on the bedded spuds, so I will give them another week.

The biggest problem with growing the spuds in the containers, is that they dry out pretty fast in this hot weather we have been getting for the past several weeks. I can water in the early am, and they are dry by evening..:/

I hope I don't have a lot with hollow hearts, as this can occur if they aren't kept well watered.

 

[digitS']

Bill, it is good to have a report from Vancouver Island. I'm curious if you are on the wetside or dryside of the island. Either way, you must be going into the driest and sunniest part of your year.

Here in the garden, another several square feet of the potato bed was dug this week. I've decided to refer to it as "several square feet" since I seem to be really off in my twice-weekly digging out of 5' of that bed.

As with any heavy task, I have a tendency to imagine that I've done more work than what results show so . . . . I'm still several square feet from the end of that 100 square foot potato bed and have all of the Yukon Golds to get thru .

What came out this week were the Norland Reds (24+ lbs). The plants were really drying so this was just about the perfect time for them to go. The plant stake identifying them had disappeared and their name had been forgotten so I had to go thru my draw of receipts to find out that they are Norlands.

They did fine but I really liked the Sangre that I grew last year but couldn't find locally in the spring. It may well be that the Norlands outperformed Sangria but those other reds were so pretty! Aestetics count for something, you know .

It was a good thing to have come up with the receipts for the seed potatoes. I bought right at 10# of seed (at about $1/lb) but remember thinking that as little as 6# would be adequate for 100 sqft. Got a little carried away but that's okay .

I have also just started re-seeding the first parts of the bed with bok choy for fall greens. I've grown bok choy on top of seriously disturbed soil before but I'm giving the ground a week and several waterings before sowing seed.

Yukon Golds next week!

Steve, who enjoyed cottage-fried Norland Red potatoes with chopped Walla Walla sweet onions and a fried egg for lunch today .

edited to correct my spelling of "Sangre" potatoes.

 

[curly_kate]

DH dug up our potatoes, and I was disappointed by the small number of potatoes we had. I planted Yukon Golds, and the potatoes were much bigger than I expected, but just very few in number. I have no idea why that happened. Any ideas, potato experts?