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.

The potato harvest

I finally – finally! – finished harvesting the potatoes. This turned into a far longer process than I anticipated.

I originally planted eight beds of potatoes in April. However I had an additional three beds where so many volunteer potatoes sprang up (doubtless from the little marble-sized potatoes that never got uncovered during last year's harvest) that I might as well have planted 11 beds. I like to rotate potato beds every year, so those three beds of volunteer potatoes grew in the same beds two years in a row.

Ironically, since we haven't had our first frost yet, the potatoes plants have stayed green and healthy. However the weather reports keep teasing us with juuuust above-freezing temperatures at night, so I knew I wouldn't get much more growth from the tubers. Time to dig them up.

It was a big task, so I divvied it into bite-sized pieces by just harvesting one (sometimes two) bed(s) a day. I started on Oct. 9 and finished on Oct. 18.

The reason for the slow harvest was because it was hard going. The soil in the raised beds was clay-ier than I anticipated, and digging was slow. Next spring, I'll work more compost and sand into each bed before planting.

Still, the harvest was abundant. This is about two beds' worth of taters.

Sizes ranged from tiny marbles to great big bakers.

A few had new growth in the touching hope that winter wasn't imminent.

One delightful surprise as I was digging was the sheer quantity of worms. There were hundreds. Thousands. Some were enormous, true night-crawler size. Others were little red wigglers.

When the wheelbarrow was fairly full from the first few beds...

...I stopped to sort the potatoes by size into crates.

I divvied them into large, medium, and small sizes. This was not an exact science. I figured the dividing point between "medium" and "small" was whether a potato was large enough to hold easily while peeling. If not, it went into the small crate.

Then it was back to digging. Soon the garden had that autumn torn-apart look to it.

Occasionally one or another cow (or calf, in this case) would pause to watch what I was doing.

At first we thought we would store the harvested potatoes in the crates in a cool room, but it soon became apparent we had far more potatoes than crates. So we ordered about a dozen gunny sacks.

Spoiler alert, gunny sacks are fantastic! As in, where-have-you-been-all-my-life fantastic. We should have bought these years ago.

I rolled the tops down on a few and started sorting again.

Many of the potatoes, it must be said, were very creative-looking. 

When all was said and done, I ended up with seven sacks of potatoes: three filled with large potatoes, three with medium, and one (very heavy) sack with small potatoes.

Darcy was very interested. While I was digging up the garden beds, he was a big help. It seems he really, really likes raw potatoes, and I had to be careful to keep them away or he'd chow down.

Since freezing temps aren't expected for a few more days, I'll leave the potatoes where they are to continue drying.

Meanwhile I brought out a bathroom scale and weighed each bag, then tallied. We harvested 230 lbs. of potatoes.

I foresee a lot of potato dishes this winter.

Garden update

Since we've deer-proofed our garden by installing 10-1/2-foot-high nuclear deer fencing, some readers have asked for an update on what's growing.

Unfortunately we completed the fencing too late to plant some of the things we wanted to plant (notably corn), and we also didn't get the full number of raised beds installed. Bottom line, only about three-quarters of the potential space is currently planted, and some of the planted beds aren't thriving. Nor is the drip irrigation system yet hooked up, though at least the underground infrastructure is in place.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Here's a wide shot of the garden as it currently looks:

In the foreground are five beds of garlic. Another two weeks or so, and they will be ready to harvest.

Interspersed in several of the garlic beds are volunteer potatoes (guess what I planted there last year?). I seldom remove volunteers. They're too much fun.

Not counting the volunteers, I planted eight beds of potatoes. Last year I had planted six beds, and the deer ate the leaves down to nubbins. Discouraged, I stopped watering – and yet still managed to harvest about sixty pounds of medium-sized potatoes (i.e., about ten pounds per bed, an abysmal return). This year, with the vegetation undisturbed and with regular watering, I'll be interested in seeing how much we harvest.

I planted two beds of onions...

...and one bed of green (bunching) onions. The bunching onions got a hard start because I didn't get around to weeding out the wheat (which grows from the straw mulch) until quite late, so most of the plants are still playing catch-up.

I have four beds of strawberries.

I'm picking a bowl of strawberries every few days. Two of the beds are Fort Laramie berries, and two are Ozark Beauty.

I had a bunch of tomato plants I grew from seed that had been sitting on the deck until the garden was fenced. As a result, they were stunted when I transplanted them. They're growing, but they're not very big. I photographed this bed before I weeded out the wheat grass.

They looked happier after I weeded.

The broccoli, which I also started from seed, has fared worst of all. As with the tomatoes, they were stunted from the start.

Then, to make things worse, the poor plants came down with a massive infestation of flea beetles, tiny jumping beetles that suck all the juices out of the leaves.

I'm starting to get the flea beetles under control, but it's too late to expect much (if anything) from the plants. In fact, I don't think they'll survive, which is a shame since broccoli is my favorite vegetable.

I have a volunteer sunflower growing in one of the potato beds. No doubt a seed from our winter bird feed was dropped here.

I've had volunteer sunflowers grow before, but always the deer got to them. This time it will be fun to watch it mature.

I also have a couple of volunteer tomatoes growing in yet another potato bed, the one in which I had grown (or tried to grow) tomatoes last year. As always, despite being cloched with deer netting, the deer got the tomatoes.

Last year I grew cherry, paste, and beefsteak tomatoes. I have no idea what kind these volunteers may be.

By far the most successful plants are the spaghetti squash.

I've never grown spaghetti squash before, and I made a grave error when planting. I planted twelve seeds in one bed, forgetting one critical factor: Spaghetti squash are related to zucchini, which of course is famously productive. Imagine planting twelve zucchini plants, and you'll start to understand the scope of the issue. I have huge numbers of spaghetti squashes coming in.

And with many flowers still blooming, I can expect more.

And then, comically, I even have a volunteer spaghetti squash growing in one of the potato beds.

(If you're wondering how I can get a volunteer squash from something I've never planted before, it's because in the fall, when I empty the compost tumbler, I bury the compost in the garden beds. A seed from a squash we had once eaten for lunch sprouted.)

As you can see, there is room for one more row of nine beds (two of which are in place but unplanted).

Clearly the game-changer in the garden is the installation of the deer fencing. Next year, we'll get the rest of the garden beds installed and the drip irrigation system hooked up. I'll be able to plant early and, hopefully, realize the full potential of this growing space.

The maximum this garden can hold is 35 beds (three rows of nine beds, one row of eight beds). However we've designed it that, should the need arise, we can expand and double the capacity to 70+ beds by extending the garden length-wise. We have enough drip irrigation supplies to accommodate that possibility as well.

Obviously getting a garden installed has been a multi-year project, and many other projects have taken precedence. Still, it's nice to have a proper garden at last.