Dig This!

For the last few years we have tried to grow potatoes. Each year we have tried different approaches and if I were to be honest the results have been disappointing each year. However, as this is a learning project I will add that each has been just a little better than the year before!

Just like in years past we prepared the soil and added compost to the tops of our planting beds. As in years past we bought our seed potatoes from the local farmers Co-op. Lastly, like the other years we planted on February 14th. Ok, planting potatoes isn't very romantic but at least you get to spend time with your "hoe"....LOL....

Well, now we get to the changes....we planted the seed potatoes about 6 inches deep and then covered them with compost. NOT soil as in the past. We also added (as a side dressing) all the ashes from BBQ joints we could find. We figured that since potash is good for root development this should help with the potatoes development. After all, they are roots!

Ok, I won't bore you with photos of plant development, etc. But, let me just say that we had good weather in general between February and April. There were only a few frosting nights and not too much rain. There didn't seem to be any insect issue, at least above the ground.

Fast forward to April 26 and it is dewberry season. The potatoes have grown to near waist high and have great foliage and you can even see some of the potatoes pushing out of the soil. As you can see the plants are healthy and seem very happy.

I didn't mention this before but we planted 2 types of potatoes. One was a Red skinned and we planted 10lb of this one. The other was a White skinned one. We only planted 5 lb of this type.

It looked like all the plants had grown very well..... If you are not familiar with potatoes they are the plants to the left of the lime green "greens".

We let the spuds go for another month. They had flowered and the plants themselves had started to turn yellow and seemed to be dying. We had already harvested a few plants just to get a taste of what was to come.... So we knew that most of the plants were indeed ready.

May 17. That was harvest day! We were all very eager to see just how many potatoes we had

gotten. Even my brother from Vega, TX was here for the event!! As you can see the digging was manual. We started at the East end of the garden and moved West. Little by little more of the tasty spuds were brought to the surface. It was a nice cool and overcast day so the work wasn't that hard but boy was it humid!!

As made our way down the rows we laughed about how we would prepare our favorite potatoes recipes. Baked with all the fixin's...boiled and then pan seared with fresh herbs. Broiled with fresh garlic and onions...soup...french fried...it seemed like the list went on and on and on.

As you can see we go all sizes! The crop was MUCH bigger than we had expected!! It was MUCH bigger than any other potato crop we had ever had!!! We got big ones, small ones (which we are saving for planting in the fall), round ones and long ones. Oh, that reminds me...we planted some fingerling potatoes in our back yard. They yielded great too!!! We even got some cool purple ones.

Ok, not all was good in spudville. As we went down the row we noticed that we were only digging up red potatoes. So, it appears that we don't have what it takes to grow the white potatoes. OH well....

Anyway, when all was said and done we harvested a HUGE 71.43 pounds of potatoes. What was the return?? well, we planted 10 pounds of seed potatoes so, if my math is correct that would be 7.143 pounds of harvested potatoes per pound of seed planted. Would that be a 714% return? Maybe I should have invested my retirement in potatoes and not Tech Stocks!!!

Needless to say we we were pretty happy about what we dug up......and we will now have a farming practice for future production! I do have a question...does the amount of BBQ consumed during the growing season have any relation to the total production of potatoes or is it only the amount of potash applied???