Margo and I love potatoes in almost every way. In addition to boiled, baked, fried, toasted, and the inevitable mixed-with-garlic, we like to plant and harvest them.Let me stress this one point about potatoes: they are easy. If I can grow them with any amount of success, you can as well. While there are many creative ways to cultivate our originally South American friends, this post will outline the method we use in Grow Biointensive, with a few elements we include for this area's hot summers.
Let us begin with varieties... As the wonderfully informative and pictorial (though depressingly-titled) Fatal Harvest points out in the chapter "Monoculture vs. Diversity," there are upwards of 5,000 varieties of potato in the world today. Only four of these are grown on the major commercial scale, but since we're all small potatoes (ha ha) we have many more choices open to us. This year we stopped by one of our local nurseries to find they had organic seed potatoes, which was great. (The only two reasons I can think of to buy seed potatoes to plant as opposed to grocery store potatoes are 1) the aforementioned possibilities of choice and 2) the disease-free guarantee that seed potato vendors can give you. None of us want potato diseases imported from Maine or somewhere.)
So we got Purple Majesty, Yellow Finn (on the left), All Red, Jacqueline Lee, Red Desiree, Red La Soda, Red Norland, and the ubiquitous Yukon Gold and Russet Burbank. And these are not getting put in tiny allotments, either. We'll be growing around 750 sq. ft. of potatoes. That's seven and a half beds that measure 5'x20'. We'll be rollin' in the potatoes by October, woo hoo! Yeah!
I think I'm getting ahead of myself.
If your local garden supply store doesn't supply seed potatoes (or has poor selection) you can always order them from one of many dependable suppliers. For great diversity we usually go to Ronniger's catalog. There are lots of others. Remember to plan ahead on this point.
How to Grow More Vegetables says it will take 25 to 30 lb of potatoes to plant 100 sq. ft. It gives a range because the actual weight depends on the specific potatoes you are going to plant. Massive potatoes can be cut into smaller pieces to plant, assuming there are enough "eyes" - I'm going to assume we all know what those are. That said, you can't carve a peanut-sized piece off around a viable eye, plant it, and expect it to grow. We go by the policy that plant-able potatoes should weigh at least 2 ounces.
If your supplier is being kind to you, they will give you "single-drop" potatoes, which are small enough that they can be tossed in the hole a bulb-planter makes. If your supplier is being naughty, they will sell you huge potatoes, by the pound, with only two eyes, both on the same end so as to make cutting impossible. Most likely you will get a mixture. Unless you get to choose, in which case you will choose excellent-looking, perfectly-sized potatoes.
If the previous two paragraphs don't make much sense to you, ignore them and plant whatever you want. This shouldn't be made into rocket science. But always pay attention to what you do, because it will give you a chance to learn something.
Now you have your potatoes... This part is easy: Set them out a month before you want to plant them. Not in direct sunlight, and not where they will freeze. How about on your dining room table?
Or beside it? Ok, how about in front of the sofa? (These pictures indicate the lengths to which our addiction leads us - they are not simply the same trays being
moved around). Put them wherever you want. The point is to get them to sprout.
Once they have sprouted, determine whether any can be cut in one or more pieces. Cutting should happen three or so days before planting, and you should have a can of wood ash at the ready when you do it. Each cut face should get coated with some. This will help keep the potato from getting disease, I think, but Margo will let me know for sure when she checks this out.
Now your potatoes are ready to go, and it is time to get down and dirty in the garden!
...but now it's time for me to make tonight's pizza dough, and so Part II will follow shortly.
So we got Purple Majesty, Yellow Finn (on the left), All Red, Jacqueline Lee, Red Desiree, Red La Soda, Red Norland, and the ubiquitous Yukon Gold and Russet Burbank. And these are not getting put in tiny allotments, either. We'll be growing around 750 sq. ft. of potatoes. That's seven and a half beds that measure 5'x20'. We'll be rollin' in the potatoes by October, woo hoo! Yeah!
I think I'm getting ahead of myself.
If your local garden supply store doesn't supply seed potatoes (or has poor selection) you can always order them from one of many dependable suppliers. For great diversity we usually go to Ronniger's catalog. There are lots of others. Remember to plan ahead on this point.
How to Grow More Vegetables says it will take 25 to 30 lb of potatoes to plant 100 sq. ft. It gives a range because the actual weight depends on the specific potatoes you are going to plant. Massive potatoes can be cut into smaller pieces to plant, assuming there are enough "eyes" - I'm going to assume we all know what those are. That said, you can't carve a peanut-sized piece off around a viable eye, plant it, and expect it to grow. We go by the policy that plant-able potatoes should weigh at least 2 ounces.
If your supplier is being kind to you, they will give you "single-drop" potatoes, which are small enough that they can be tossed in the hole a bulb-planter makes. If your supplier is being naughty, they will sell you huge potatoes, by the pound, with only two eyes, both on the same end so as to make cutting impossible. Most likely you will get a mixture. Unless you get to choose, in which case you will choose excellent-looking, perfectly-sized potatoes.
If the previous two paragraphs don't make much sense to you, ignore them and plant whatever you want. This shouldn't be made into rocket science. But always pay attention to what you do, because it will give you a chance to learn something.
Now you have your potatoes... This part is easy: Set them out a month before you want to plant them. Not in direct sunlight, and not where they will freeze. How about on your dining room table?
Or beside it? Ok, how about in front of the sofa? (These pictures indicate the lengths to which our addiction leads us - they are not simply the same trays being
moved around). Put them wherever you want. The point is to get them to sprout.Once they have sprouted, determine whether any can be cut in one or more pieces. Cutting should happen three or so days before planting, and you should have a can of wood ash at the ready when you do it. Each cut face should get coated with some. This will help keep the potato from getting disease, I think, but Margo will let me know for sure when she checks this out.
Now your potatoes are ready to go, and it is time to get down and dirty in the garden!
...but now it's time for me to make tonight's pizza dough, and so Part II will follow shortly.
No comments:
Post a Comment