Sunday, September 7, 2014

Fall Planted Potatoes


Purple Viking have been a favorite potato here for years.  Pink and purple blotched skin coloring are a reminder of the 1960's.  At that time in our experience, drug use had not found the math majors yet. Only some of the art majors were experimenting with hallucinogenics during our college years.  These wildly marked potatoes do suggest that turbulent time.

This five gallon pail was filled with the harvest from two six foot long rows.  Our single drop seed potatoes were rather puny but sound.  They had a record year.  This variety tends to produce lunkers.  Small seed is somewhat hard to find.  The seed potatoes were planted close together in a futile attempt to control the size of the crop.  We lack proper storage conditions so seed production was never part of the plan.  This variety keeps all of the new potatoes close together.  Crowding the plants had absolutely no impact of the underground activity.


A cluster of eyes makes this potato visually stunning.


These three unwashed potatoes were selected for seed.  Several years ago I returned seed to soil at harvest time with excellent results.  Their Spring growth was timed to avoid frost and they produced a decent crop.  Documentation of that experiment may be lacking so we repeat it here to establish a written record.  These potatoes were replanted within hours of their removal from the soil.


Two rows of three potatoes each were planted across the West end of the bed near the stone square.  A marker still needs to be placed to help us remember what we planted here.  Potatoes have never before been planted in this bed so their appearance next year could confuse us.  Avoiding that is the real reason for this post.

1 comment:

Donna@Gardens Eye View said...

I look forward to reading about your experiment Ed as I would love to try this and those fascinating potatoes. Thanks.