potatoes

[hsm5grls]

Who plants potatoes and how do you do it. Do you get enough to feed the family? Do they store well? I have been wanting to try it and was hoping for some advice. Maybe a good web site.

 

[Reinbeau]

I plant potatoes every year. I really like Russian Banana Fingerlings, they're my favorite. This past year I also planted Yukon Golds. They were good, but they're subject to some kind of blight where you get black hearts in some - ruins the whole potato But they didn't all get it, so I had a good harvest. I don't grow a huge amount, I've still got fingerlings downstairs, but the Yukons are gone, I finished them off this week.

I dig a trench with a hoe about 10" deep and plant the potatoes in the bottom of that. Potatoes form on the stem above the potato piece you plant, that's why you bury the stems as they grow. They flower (pretty flowers one some of them) and then die back, that's when you harvest them. Don't clean them off, let the dirt dry on them, and get them out of the sun - they'll turn green, you can't eat the green on them, it'll make you sick.

I'm not the expert potato grower, I'm sure others will pipe in with more advice.

 

[hsm5grls]

Thank you so much. Do you plant in the fall or in the spring and where do you buy them? I am really excited to try this.

 

[Reinbeau]

I buy them in the spring. Last year I bought them from Pinetree Garden Seeds, they had the best prices. There are other suppliers, [rul=[url]http://www.woodprairie.com/catalog/index.html]Wood[/url] Prairie Farm[/url] has an excellent selection, but they're a bit pricey.

 

[hsm5grls]

thank you reinbeau. i'm gonna go check them out.

 

[skeeter9]

When you plant them, do you cut the potatoes you are planting? I tried that once and they just rotted - I must not have understood the directions correctly!

Lori

 

[Smitty's Farm]

Hey everyone! We planted potatoes a few years ago.
We did red new potatoes, white, and sweet ones. I can't remember the varieties. We bought them from Rural King. We cut the seed (eyes) about half inch thick and my husband sealed the sides of the cuts with wax. Then we planted them about a week later in a raised bed with rich soil about 2" deep and 1' apart. We just dug a trench and put them in with the eyes facing up. I think most people plant them around St Patrick's Day here, but we didn't get ours in until early April, but they did great. It was so yummy to eat frest Potatoes from the garden. By the way, I live in Illinois. We were bumming, b/c we didn't plant any this past spring. I was trying to remember why and it just occured to me that my day old chics came in on April 12th, so everything was neglected since then. Ha! Ha!

 

[Reinbeau]

When you plant them, do you cut the potatoes you are planting? I tried that once and they just rotted - I must not have understood the directions correctly!

Lori

The best thing is to cut the seed potatoes with one or two eyes on them and let the cut callous a bit (dry out) before you plant them. If they're small enough without cutting, then don't cut them. Also, potatoes don't like to be soggy, the soil needs to be well-drained. If you put them out too early into soggy soil they'll rot for sure.

 

[skeeter9]

Thanks, Reinbeau! I think I'll make a raised bed for them and try some in the spring. I guess it's the Irish in me, but I just love potatoes!!!!

Lori

 

[Badhbh]

I found a brilliant idea on a web site a long time ago for a reuse-recycle way of growing taters Get two tires. Stack them, and fill with good dirt. Plant your potatoes. When they leaf out a good bit on top, add another tire on to the top, and add more dirt up to the level that the leaves have come up. As the plants grow, stack more tires and add more dirt. By the end of the season, your tires are chock full of potatoes, and all you do is knock over the stack and pick them out. You can grow several different varieties at once in different stacks, keep some tires out of the landfills, AND the tires can be painted in all sorts of manners to make them prettier. Also, if you keep chickens, they LOVE digging through the dirt after you've picked all the potatoes.