The great thing about gardening is that you can easily put on the hat of scientist and the garden is your laboratory. Potatoes are one of those food items if we don't buy organic, we don't buy it. Commercial potato growers spray massive amounts of chemicals to kill the foliage before harvesting the potato from the ground. Potatoes have a soft, porous skin...you do the math. So to say the least, we were very excited about growing our own. Our feed store got in a few sacks of "seed potatoes", and I picked up some red and gold for planting. You can't use the ones from the grocery store, because they are treated with an agent that prevents buds from sprouting. (Another reason to buy organic!) It was suggested to me by a friend not to cut them and plant them directly into the soil, rather cut them and let them air dry (out of direct sunlight) until they harden up a little on the cut sides. It is supposed to reduce possible rotting when planted. I quartered them, placed them on trays and let them sit for about a week on my kitchen table. The above picture is what they looked like prior to going into the ground.
Another nifty idea is to plant them in stacked tires or a garbage can. As you can see, I opted for the garbage can which I "sacrificed" by cutting it in half and removing the bottom. I've heard, it makes harvesting very easy, just tipping over the containers and pulling out the taters! I planted 2 levels of potatoes. If this method is successful, we will be able to easily double or triple our plantings with more barrels, since they free up so much garden space planted this way.
Fingers crossed, hopefully we will be harvesting our own organic potatoes!!
Stay tuned!! :)
Fingers crossed, hopefully we will be harvesting our own organic potatoes!!
Stay tuned!! :)
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