New Kennebec potatoes

We had these for supper tonight, yum!

Yum indeed! Fried, mashed, or baked?

TC...

TC, mashed.....just boiled in their skins and had leftovers for pan frys for breakfast. :o)

Another Yum! Potatoe cakes for breakfast. It doesn't get any bettter!

TC...

Yep...looks good to me!

I've "peeked" under a couple plants but don't see much going on yet...a few here and there is all. I got tater envy, Big Red!

Brother, Mother and Dad have their taters flowerin big time now. They live in south central Kentucky Big Red, a little town called Greensburg, about an hour and a half south of Louisville. Closer to Nashville than Louisville.

Horseshoe, how does one "peek" under tater plants? Now you must promise to give a really good descriptive answer that will make us guffaw. ;~)

TC...

Hah....sorry...not much to guffaw about! :>)

You actually just sneak up to the tater row, silently. With a short-handled diggin' fork you get down on your knees and massage the plant, whispering sweet-nothings to it and massage the foliage.

Next, it's just a matter of forking away the hilled dirt from the plant, gently excavating and looking for the jewels. Try not to disturb the roots. Eventually you will see either taters or nothing! (Hard to see 'nothing' ...you have to look very close!)

The best and easiest way to "peek" is to grow your taters mulched in leaves. This way you can easily pull back the mulch and explore, pick a few spuds (w/out disturbing the rest of the plant) and later on still harvest the bigguns!

I just start from the side of the row and stick my hand in and feel around a bit and pull out the biggest ones. But remember this won't work on tough dirt. My sandy loam is pretty forgiving especially when it is hilled up as high as it is. The second way I do it is just pull up the whole thing and harvest whatever is there. Works for me because I plant two rows about 60 feet each and it still makes more than we can use. Ernie

I just pull up the whole plant too. I've got 5 rows about 65 ft long so I'll have plenty of taters, especially the way they're growing now.

this year I only put in two 50 ft rows (plus two cages in the No Work bed). I'm more than sure we'll have plenty. Where we are it takes about a hundred days to make good storing potatoes.

rednshoe Do you kill your vines or just let them die off prior to digging them for storage. I work with a guy who says he cuts them off when the blooms fade. He says they keep growing after he cuts them and his potatoes get bigger that way. With storage potatoes being about $7 to 8$ for a 50 pound sack in the farmers shed I never worry about saving more than 10 gallons for storage. If the farmer was ever home when I buy his potatoes the price may be different lol.

TC I think shoe sliped in to evasive mode he failed to mention he has invented a new farmers aid called the veggie scope. The veggi scope employs a digital infared immaging system that works off of the double doppler radar theory. The surrounding soil is bombarded with microscopic sismic signals which are returned to the scope and encoded thereby producing an under ground picture of whats there. This enables him to run the data back through the volumetric efficency meter which tells him the relative mass of the different masses located beneath the surface. Since this is still a protype there are a few bugs to work out like how to tell the difference between rocks and potatoes.Ernie

Bravo Ernie, bravo! I'm at a loss for a reply to that one!

I'll have to let Horseshoe post a response to your wonderfully witty remark.

By the way, that brought a big guffaw, along with the one Horseshoe already caused.

TC...

TC glad you liked it just my farm boy sense of humor self taught by necessity in the days before tv at our house. When a guy has five yep a handful of sisters to survive you need to fabricate a little here and there. Ernie

hah! Very good, ernie! I can't top that one! Luv it!

As for topping the tater plants...I've never done that, I just let em die away. Wonder if there is anything to it though.

I still havn't put any taters in y'all. I was gonna try that leaf mulch idee you mentioned to me Horseshoe, but...

It seems I get so caught up in my flower gardening that veggie gardening gets kind of lost in the weeds. ;~)

TC...

"Brother, Mother and Dad have their taters flowerin big time now. They live in south central Kentucky Big Red, a little town called Greensburg, about an hour and a half south of Louisville."

Greensburg, I'll have to look it up on the map, can't be too far from us as we're in central Kentucky also.

I've never topped mine either, just let them die back.

If ya ain't to fer from Greensburg, maybe we mite catch one another sometime whilst I'm down visitin!

TC...

TC, can't be too far, let me know when you're down here and I'll drive over, I'd really like to meet you (and your folks)!

Sounds like a plan B_R. I just may be headin in that direction soon. I'll let ya know.

TC...