Photo by Chiloe Avodrocc.
Potatoes
Commonly grown potatoes come in a range of colours, shapes and sizes.
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hat is there to learn about potatoes? They are the old fill-up food bought in 10or 20-pound bags and peeled and boiled for every supper, if you’re from a northern European family. With a little know-how and a bit of effort, you can grow bushels and bushels. That may be true, but this lowly vegetable is uniquely fascinating and well deserving of a few pages. Growing from seed potatoes Seed potatoes are potatoes that have been inspected and certified to prevent diseases from being passed along. Theoretically, you could use potatoes from the grocery store as seed potatoes, but many have been sprayed with growth inhibitor and others may bring diseases, such as fusarium rot, into your garden. Better to buy seed potatoes for planting. Second best is to plant from potatoes you saved last year.
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If you want, you can chit potatoes before planting them out. Put the uncut seed potatoes in bright light for two to four weeks—a window sill is perfect. You will see green shoots coming out of the eyes. If you want, cut the seed potatoes into equal-sized pieces, each with about two eyes on it. Some people prefer three eyes, some prefer one. If the seed potatoes are small, less than the size of a small chicken egg, you don’t need to cut them at all. The difference will be this: more eyes on a seed will yield more but smaller potatoes. Two sprouts is a good compromise. You can shake the cut potatoes in a bag of sulfur powder if you like; it helps to prevent disease. Leave the cut potatoes out to callous over before planting for two to four days. Trench and hill method Dig a trench about six inches deep in a moist but not wet garden. Issue 4
Sprinkle about a quarter cup of bone meal where each potato plant will go: about every foot for full-size potatoes or every eight inches if you plan to harvest only new potatoes. Lay your seed potatoes in the trench. Cover them over with about four inches of dirt. Do not water them until you see growth. Water regularly from this point until the potatoes are fully grown. How much water? About one to two inches per week. When the plants are a foot high, pile on another six inches of soil. You will cover the stems and a few leaves but that is okay. You should have a small hill around each potato plant. When the flowers appear, you can harvest some new potatoes from the edges of the hill and leave the rest to grow, or you can harvest them all from the plant at this point, but they won’t store well. The soil should be loose enough to go digging with your localgardener.net
