Planting potatoes

I'm slowly getting various things planted in the garden, notably the cool-weather stuff that can handle spring temperatures. Last week I planted potatoes.

Unlike last year, when I planted eight beds and harvested 230 pounds of potatoes, I'm limiting our potatoes this year to just three beds. That's because we are still swimming in potatoes and don't need eight more beds' worth.

I had already layered compost on the beds from a couple weeks earlier, so all I had to do was turn it over (which takes just a couple of minutes per bed).

Lots and lots of worms, always a nice thing to see.

 

 

Now let's briefly digress to last October, when I harvested all the potatoes from last summer's garden. We ended up storing them in burlap bags in the "cool room," a small unheated room Don built off our bedroom as extra storage space.

 

We were pressed into using this space as an impromptu root cellar, and to be honest it's worked out amazingly well. In previous years, without a dedicated place to store potatoes over the winter, they were ridiculously overgrown by April – fine for planting, but not for eating.

But last year's potatoes – and remember, we still have lots – are still in excellent shape, even after six months in storage.

For planting, I brought out the burlap sack that contained the smallest potatoes, which I used as seed potatoes.

I arranged three rows of seven potatoes each, for a total of 21 potatoes per bed, or 63 total potatoes.

Using a trowel, it doesn't take long to bury each potato deeply.

That's as far as I got last week, and ever since then we've been dodging some fairly major rainstorms.

With more rain on the way, the one thing I hadn't yet done was put straw mulch on the beds.

Mulching takes no time at all.

Mr. Darcy supervised the process.

Except for a little light weeding (notably, of the volunteer wheat that will grow from the wheat-straw mulch) – and watering, of course – that's all I'll need to do to the potatoes until October, when I'll harvest them.

It's a good thing I got the mulching done when I did, since we had a dramatic bit of rain move through today.

One of those days

Have you ever had one of those days when you're incredibly productive? Yeah, today was that kind of day.

My work week starts on Thursday (I work an online job Thursday through Saturday). They're usually eleven or twelve-hour days, so I'm pretty tuckered by the end of  them. I've learned, therefore, to do chores on Wednesday, simply because it's nice to start the work week with a clean house.

Additionally, we've had a stretch of absolutely beautiful weather, with sunny days and temps in the low 70s. The birds are singing, the trees are budding, the grass is greening. Spring is here!

Sort of. Weather moves back in tonight and we have about a week of rain (and even a small chance of snow), so we enjoyed the sunshine while we could.

I started by washing our flannel sheets, and hanging them outside to dry. Drying flannel sheets indoors on drying racks is kinda awkward, but it's what I do all winter. Being able to hang them outdoors is a luxury indeed.

I also hung a regular load of laundry, parking the drying racks in the sun to take advantage of the warmth.

I steeped some sun tea.

Next I started a burn barrel. While that was happening, I started raking up all the fallen willow branches from the windy storms earlier this month, starting with the front and side yards. Willows are very pretty trees, but man they shed a lot.

I dumped everything next to the burn pit in the back yard so I could burn it. Darcy, intrigued by all the sticks I was conveniently providing, was a big help.

While the fire burned and Darcy chewed on sticks...

...I raked up the willow branches from the back yard and fed them into the fire. (The photo makes it seem like the fire had spread everywhere; I assure you it didn't.)

After this, I rooted around in the potato bin and pulled out 96 smallish potatoes for planting.

I wanted to plant six beds of potatoes, and figured 16 seed potatoes per bed.

I had prepped the beds yesterday, so they were easy to plant. Space, lever the dirt aside with a shovel, drop the potato in, voila.

It's a bit early to plant potatoes, but I'm willing to take my chances. Any excuse to get a jumpstart on the garden. I'll mulch them in a couple of weeks with straw.

Next I hauled in another load of firewood to add to the stash on the porch, to see us through the upcoming rainy weather.

We were low on kindling for the woodstove, so I collected some thin leftover slats from the shop...

...cut them on the bandsaw...

...and brought them up to the porch. Likely this will be enough kindling to see us through the remainder of the spring.

I emptied the ash bucket in the woodstove.

Then I did a small organizational chore that had been bugging me. In the pantry I keep a box where I store miscellaneous canning rings and assorted lids. It was over-full and hard to find canning rings when I needed them. Just one of those irksome things.

So I cleaned out the box and separated regular and wide-mouth rings into piles.

Then I threaded the rings onto string fastened with a shower clip for easy access.

I hung these in the pantry. I should have done this years ago.

Now my lid box has lots of room.

Next chore: Vacuuming the house (and cleaning the bird cage).

In the evening, I filled a tub with firewood...

...and watched the sky darken with incoming weather.

The very last thing I did today was put up this blog post. Whew, I'm bushed, but at least I have the satisfaction of knowing I got stuff done today.

Potato update

As you may recall, I planted potatoes in grow bags (again) this year. I tried this technique last year, but between a bad location and bad clay soil, it was a complete flop. This year I relocated the grow bags to a better location and used better soil.

The idea with indeterminate potatoes is to bury them in layers, because more potatoes will form from the stem. When I first planted them in grow bags in April, I put in about four inches of soil in bottom of the bags, laid down the seed potatoes, and buried them in about four more inches of soil. This meant the grow bags were about half-full. I also gave a modest sprinkle of fertilizer at this stage.

After that, it was a matter of waiting until the potatoes had grown enough that I could finish filling the bags with soil while still allowing enough leaves poking out to let the plans photosynthesize.

I did this over a period of a few days in late May/early June. It took a bit of practice before I got the hang of how best to get the dirt in among the potato plants without burying them irrevocably (the secret, I found, is to take a shovel-full of dirt and shake it over the plants, rather than dumping it).

This allowed me the chance to try to un-bury leaves as well. New tubers form from the stems, not the leaves, so I didn't want to bury the leaves unnecessarily. I accidentally broke a few leaves off during this process, but I figured it was early enough in the season to give the potatoes time to recover.

As of this writing (June 22), the potatoes are so lush and beautiful that I will often just pause and admire them (Don and Older Daughter never miss the opportunity to tease me about that). They're doing even better in these grow bags than in the garden in our old place. 

I'm thrilled at the thought of what's happening at the root level. How many tubers will we be able to harvest per bag? That remains to be seen, but I'm optimistic.

In fact, assuming this experiment is a success, I'll continue using grow bags for indeterminate potatoes even after we get the raised-bed garden built (which, by the way, is a project I'll post about shortly). So far I'm impressed with them!