POTATOES UNDER STRAW/LEAVES #4

Nice taters everyone!! Mine are still chugging along, but we're supposed to be about 110° by the weekend, so I may dig them tonight and see what I get... I'll let you know.

Yeah, we're supposed to be in the 100º range on Fri, Sat, Sun, so I'm thinking of digging mine up, too.

Harvested the big blue container of taters this morning! Purple Viking and Kennebecs. Not much, but I only started with 1/2 lb of seed potatoes.

Nice job Stephanie!

I'm thinking of trying to order more seed potatoes to plant in the fall. Any thoughts from anyone on that?

my potato plants look good and healthy but do they flower or something to let me know it is time to harvest
and how do they taste everyone? better than store bought?

They may or may not flower, but when they start dying down and looking scraggly, it's time to harvest them.

I just had a few of my yucon gold potatoes with a splash of olive oil and salt and pepper and they are delicious, the skin on these is so thin that you can just eat the whole thing and not have to peel them at all unlike the store bought potatoes that I use to buy. I definetely taste the diference between a store bought and a homegrown potato. I still have lots of potatoes left and I am keeping them in the fridge so they don't spoil on me. I will be trying them other ways as well.

Mine did not get any flowers at all so I just waited until the plants were all dying off before I harvested, I ended up with a lot of smallish size ones but some decent size ones as well.

Stephanie I am also thinking of planting some by Sep 15th time frame and getting some new potatoes as well, I just have to check and see if I can get a early producing one before the cold starts setting in.

i thought you never refridgerate potaotoes

Steph,
Great job!

I too am thinking of planting for a fall crop in late August...

I am planning a trip to an appliance repair place to see if they have any extra wash tubs ;-)

MechelleT,
Just a note that, in my observation, you'll need to plant extra seed potatoes to get a big harvest. I only planted 2 small cut pieces in my potato tubs, so I'm not expecting a huge harvest. Next time, I'll plant more seed potatoes...Also, I won't hill with leaves, once the container is filled to the top.

Linda

Good tips, thank you..

i did stop hilling my leaves because of the different posts here that said it didn't seem to help-that the potatoes grew at the bottom anyhow--
and i think you are right about new potatos can be refridgerated--i really don't eat potatoes very often anymore--might get back in the habit again

MaryMCP. Oh, it gets cold here definetely in the low 20's, expecially this year it got really cold and we had a lot of freezes as well, not sure what to expect this year but better to be safe than sorry for sure.

Planolinda, I have refrigereated potatoes for a long time, even before I started growing them and they did far better, if I don't refrigerate they start spoiling fairly fast expecially with our hot humid temps. Mine have very thin skins as well.
One thing I am not refrigerating anymore I have to say is tomatoes, they definetely taste better when kept outside the fridge at room temp.

Linda I am with you, I don't think I will keep hilling the potatoes past the container height, I think we went through a lot of trouble doing so and then all the potatoes were at the bottom, at least for me. Also I will try compost this time not leaves, I did not have any potatoes at all growing in the leaves, only a lot of worms.

Interesting info folks. I just harvested three plants, not much of a harvest, somehow I expected them to produce prolificly. I'll get a picture later and post it. Like Kelly, mine won't last long enough to worry about storage. Probably roast and eat all of these today!

Here's my harvest - yum yum.

aren't we funny --pictures of potatos for all to enjoy and envy!
they look wonderful-hope i can post one day-or maybe just hope to have some of my own some day soon

when did you plant them

In other words, "the vines grow best during the longer days of late spring/early summer, and the SPUDS grow best during the shorter days of late summer (and probably into early fall)

How's that?

(I'm an amateur wordsmith...")

I'll force myself to wait two weeks after the plants start to die before I harvest. So, for my crop that means I will be harvesting later this month...

Carmen - never ever refrigerate tomatoes or bananas - lol...

Nice taters McP! I really need to harvest mine, but then I see it's cooling off again end of hte week - what to do, what to do?!?!

Thanks for that link dividedsky. Now I'm confused too - lol - just kidding... I may or may not experiment with a fall crop - we'll see. I need to ask the farmers at the downtown market when they grow taters and see what they say. The day length thing is probably why I don't see planting times for fall anywhere for my area - hmmmmmmmmm.

That's exactly what I was thinking, Kelly. I was at my local FM this past Saturday and I will stop by again next weekend to talk shop. I'm sure one of the farmers will have some great advice for growing potatoes here in the gulf coast.

Also, I am confused with the day-length thing as well...

Our temps are hitting the high 90s this week, and our A/C went out yesterday evening. Sooooooooooooo. I guess I better dump the rest of the spud buckets, huh?

This is gonna be REALLY interesting.

First off, I don't remember which ones are planted where...
Second, there's at least ONE snake lurking amongst the leaves....
Third, I've gotta figure out where to put the lovely compost from all the containers!

I think we found 1 potato in the leaf portion of the big container we dumped yesterday. It was probably in the first layer of leaves we added. DH and I talked about it, and we decided that next time, we're going to mix in lots of compost and maybe some old leaves, THEN plant the seed potatoes and cover with some dirt, but do it in the ground, rather than in containers. We can still use leaves to hill, but not to the extent that we did this time. (This was our first attempt at farming potatoes. LOL) We found that the actual soil in this container was very dry when we got down to it, so that factored into our decision making as well.

We can plant again mid-late July. The bush beans will be finished by then, so we can plant the taters in that spot!

Yay for Stephanie! (jumping-up-and-down-clapping-hands-SMILEY)

Steph, my planting medium STAYED very moist. This was a blessing because there were days I didn't get around to deep watering. Actually, toward the end, I was just hosing off the leaves on top and letting some of the water dribble down into the soilbed to keep it moist.

I do believe the leaves on top have kept the soilbed below much cooler, but I'll know when I dump the containers whether this has factored in or not. I still have at least 3 containers with very robust vines, although they have stopped growing vertically. Does this mean they're putting energy into the spuds below and I might actually have a potato that will fit my whole hand? (smile - LOL)

Linda, how exciting potatoes and a snake to harvest. Please do tell us how it goes! I would problably shake the pots first and see if anything comes out of the tubs before I stick my hand there if I were you. Also do post pictures, prety please!

The soil was very wet, almost too mud-like, in the smaller containers and we'd not watered those for quite some time before harvesting because we thought they were dead. LOL

Hey guys!

The exciting part about the snake is that, if one got into the tubs somehow, the holes are so small it couldn't have crawled out. So, there's no way out but UP, through the leaves, where I will be!

Congrats on the harvest, MaryMcP and Stephanie!

It seems WAY to early, but my Peanut fingerling potatoes are starting to develop flower buds! I pulled them off, hope that was the right thing to do.

Good luck with your snake harvesting, Linda!

Midwest_Tyro!

Way to go with flower buds!

midwest_tyro for what I have read, taking the flower will help place the energy of the plants to produce more spuds instead of more flowers so I think you did the right thing.

Thanks for the votes of confidence! It's been less than 7 weeks since they popped up above ground - only about 45 days!

Hmm...although I just checked the Ronniger growing guide and found this:
"Digging New Potatoes
In approximately 40 - 60 days after planting, the early potatoes
may have blossomed. This is your sign that new potatoes
may be ready, so carefully poke into the potato hill by hand to
see what you can find."

Since these fingerlings are an early type, maybe 45 days isn't so crazy after all.... I'll have to poke around in the hay when it stops raining. Although new fingerlings seem like they'd be awfully tiny! Probably makes more sense to wait until they're fully grown, which is still pretty small anyway.

M_T,
A word of warning if you're growing in hay -- take a shovel or something and give your haystack a couple of good WHACKS! before you go rooting around in there.

I hear the snakes like hay more than the washing machine tubs!

O.K I have a question, I am thinking of planting potatoes this fall, and I still have the fingerling potatoes that I did not have room for the last time, so my question is should I plant these banana russian fingerling potatoes, will they have enough time to produce new potatoes for me or should I just throw them out? They have been rooting for a long time now and have nice size roots but I am wondering whether they'll produce anything by the time the cold weather comes.

Plant them for fall when the time is right!