This is our first year growing potatoes. Besides sweet potatoes, which aren’t ready yet, we grew three varieties of white potatoes. Red Cloud and Dark Red Norland are red-skinned varieties and Carola is a yellow potato (check out our August newsletter). We tried to get a russet variety, but the farm we ordered from didn’t have a good supply. Which is just fine with us, since red and yellow (and purple) are our favorite varieties anyhow. Let’s see how we did with our potato harvest.
Planting and growing
We built three raised beds for the potatoes this year, one for each variety. Each bed is 3’x6’x8″. Based on a little research, we decided against the extra steps of cutting and chitting the potatoes and just planted the seed potatoes whole. The seed potatoes were generally small. However, we would have cut any that were really big. It seems the extra steps gardeners take in cutting seed potatoes don’t necessarily result in a larger potato harvest.
We purchased one pound of seed potatoes in each variety. This gave us 6 of the red-skinned ones and 10 of the yellow. We distributed them evenly in their respective beds, buried about 6 inches deep. In no time, we had little green sprouts popping up! The plants were pretty when full-grown, the red-skinned ones making pretty purple flowers and the yellow making white flowers.
In due time, the foliage began to turn brown and die back. Almost time! About 2 weeks after the foliage is all dried up is a good time to harvest, though potatoes can stay in the dry ground much longer. It was difficult being patient while we waited and wondered what was happening under that dirt.
Check out our summer garden tour!
Time for the potato harvest
- Red Cloud were ready first. How very exciting and satisfying to find potatoes under that dirt as we began to dig! In the end, for our one pound of seed potatoes, 6 plants, we harvested 5.75 lbs of delicious red potatoes. They were served simply, boiled and buttered, to my in-laws for my MIL’s birthday dinner. And some leftovers. They were delicious!
- Carola were ready next. I believe they were supposed to be last, but it looks like a critter of some sort found the leaves tasty and put a bit of stress this bed. I was concerned about how that would impact the yield. However, I was happy to find some nicely-sized potatoes in that bed as well. As a result, our one lb of seed potatoes, 10 plants, yielded nearly 7 lbs of yummy yellow potatoes. A good portion of which went into a hash. You’ll find the recipe in one of our upcoming newsletters.
- Dark Red Norland held out to the last, however, it didn’t disappoint. Seems that waiting served well. From our one pound of seed, 6 plants, we dug up 8.5 lbs of large, red-skinned beauties!
In all, a great potato harvest! We are thankful to be able to call this first year of growing potatoes a successful one and look forward to future years. Not to mention whatever is happening in the ground under the mounds of sweet potato vines overflowing their beds.
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