Thursday, April 30, 2009

4 Potatoes Today

Since the potatoes grow underground it is a mystery what we will get until the end. We thought that the plants were suffering from too much water when a few of the container plants wilted and died. So today we took the most dried up plant and dumped him out. What a joy to find some beautiful, we might say perfect potatoes. We knew that you harvest them after they dry out, but the containers were mixed up and we don't know which was which. Great surprise for our Thursday afternoon. Yay for a Suburban Garden success!!

10 comments:

  1. Your season is so different than ours. I should have just planted mine the past two weeks but my tiller is on the fritz. It is now too wet but by Monday I will plant. We always planted on Good Friday when I was a kid down on the farm. Your potatoes look great!

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  2. Now those are a couple of nice looking spuds. Funny, we just planted ours 3 weeks ago and yours are ready for harvest. I will have to try growing some in containers, I never have but it looks like it works for you. Perhaps I will give it a go with a few of my leftovers as I have few that I had no room for in the regular garden. Good job.

    Mike

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  3. That is so cool. I plan to plant some potatoes this weekend. Looking at Martha Stewart last week, she planted her from old potatoes that had eyes on them (cut them in sections) and then planted. Is that how you did yours, or did you actually by a potato plant (new to all of this)?

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  4. L.D. Yes the season is strange for us. We decided in November to start the winter garden and it just seemed so odd. Potatoes were first started in December. Now I find out that with the right crops you can grow year round here. Wow.

    Mr. H, Now we're excited for the next container plant to completely die so we can turn it over and see what's inside. I'm thinking you probably planted over 100 plants?

    Cynthia, I am stoked about the potatoes. We planted russets in December from regular store bought potatoes that had eyes. Then we bought 20 seed potatoes for the other plantings. When we run out of seed potatoes, we will use store bought again. Good Luck!!

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  5. 195 plants, the goal being to harvest at least 2,000 potatoes. 500 for us, 600-700 for the chickens, seed potatoes for next year and the rest we will probably give away to friends and family. I am always looking for alternative ways of planting and growing things though, like in containers the way you do...just in case I ever need to.

    I like todays quote of the day,

    Mike

    Mike

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  6. fruit of labor, very nice....by the way, you can update your blog through your cell phone...go to your dashboard and register your phone...text messaging charges may apply....you can update your blog but, limited ...just try it

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  7. I just nocied that you mentioned you poured them from the pots. I did not know that you could do them in pots, thought they had to be in the ground. Oh my goodness, I have this huge wine barrel (well it looks like a wine barrell, made out of some composite something). That would be perfect for the potates. I have got to read up on this more to find out how to go about it. Thanks.

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  8. Mr. H, That is so cool to have 195 potato plants.

    Amy, Thanks. I love the 'charges may apply' reminder. That's funny but true.

    Cynthia, I wanted to use containers for two reasons. A- I do not have a lot of garden space. B- The pouring out technique of harvesting seemed so much easier than digging around trying to find them. Sure enough, the first container was a success. Try it for sure.

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  9. How long did it take your potatoes to grow a stem and leaves. Mine have been in the ground for almost two weeks and so far nothing..is that normal?

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  10. Margaret,

    I would say that is normal. Maybe it depends how deeply they are planted. Ours poked out of the ground around 2-3 weeks after planting. We planted them about 2-3 inches deep. Try to be patient. I know the carrots drive us crazy waiting for them to sprout. It will be soon.

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