We had a spectacularly nice couple of days this weekend. Normal highs. Normal lows. A bit of rain, but not a total washout. Really just spectacular.
After going to a local harvest festival, we set to harvesting our potatoes which were growing along the fence-line at the back of the yard. I don't know what it is about harvesting root crops that I find so exciting...maybe it's because you don't know what you're getting until you really begin to dig. Or maybe I'm just impatient and excitable. Could be.
You can see where this is going right?
To our little man, dying/dead potato plants looked just like dying/dead weeds, so while mom and dad were busy, he proceeded to chop.
And he chopped.
And he hacked.
And blimey if he didn't do a good job on the weeds...but the poor potatoes...they got the Lizzy Borden treatment. And naturally, it wasn't the small potatoes that got hacked in half. It was the big, beautiful, picture-perfect baking size taters that took the brunt of the chops.
Sigh.
After all was said and done, we dug up 68 pounds of potatoes Saturday. With what we dug last month, our total is up to 82 pounds and we're guesstimating the remaining plants will give us another #15-20. We fell well-short of the #125-150 I'd hoped for, but still did well for our first real attempt at growing potatoes.
Next major harvest: sweet taters!
8 comments:
What are you going to do with the hacked up potatoes? I'm guessing they won't store like un-whacked spuds.
Is it just 'tater eatin' time in your household? Tater soup, tater stew, fried taters, boiled taters, etc?
Dehydrate some?
Chief-
I canned them along with the tiny taters...the ones too small to really bother with. I figure this winter they'll make some fine potato soup.
I've tried dehydrated potatoes before and they're -okay- but I'd much rather have canned or frozen.
Morning Andrea
your post made me smile, while it was not good that a number of potato's got hacked up, but you got to love it that your little ones want to help and are good helpers.
Any advice regarding potato bugs? This year we planted 8 squares in our SFG and got ravaged by those nasty things. I asked online and was told something like "burn the garden and plow it under and let it lie fallow for 3 years and MAYBE they'll be gone"; ie - "haha, sucks to be you, there's nothing much to be done."
We picked them off daily and/or as often as we spotted them but they eventually had their way with our plants, which went from bushy and beautiful to leafless and straggly. I'm bitterly disappointed because I was told months ago that there is nothing like a homegrown potato - store bought pale in comparison. And all we got out of it, kid you not, was a two inch little guy that wouldn't even qualify as a snack.
Any thoughts for next year? And how late can one plant for a fall potato crop?
fg-it IS fun having little helpers around.
NEOH-Hey, how are ya? I don't know much about treating for potato bugs...I guess it just depends on if you're going the organic route or not. If not, some plain old Sevin dust will do the trick. If you want organic, you can use wood ashes and epsom salts. Ehow.com also recommended sulfer powder for keeping away fungus and pests.
Google home remedy for potato bugs and you should get lots of suggestions.
I'm not sure how late you can plant potatoes...we planted ours somewhere around early to mid-June and they had plenty of time to develop.
Thank you! I will make note of that and google it too.
Sweet potatoes are harder to harvest. You must be very careful not to cut into the skin, otherwise you will need to cook/eat or can them right away. It is more like an archeological dig with sweet potatoes.
Thanks for the tip, Anon. We'll make sure we leave the boy inside when we start the sweet tater digging! Any tips on curing them? I've heard conflicting information.
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