Sprouted Potatoes

 I saved some potatoes from last year's harvest: butterball, Swedish fingerling, and blue potatoes. I stored them in my upstairs bathroom closet because it is dark and cold. I hoped that they would make it through the winter. When I went to retrieve them today, I saw that they had sprouted. The sprouts have already started to produce leaves. Since I have nothing to lose, I decided to try to plant them anyway.

I grow my potatoes in large plastic pots. I add a couple of inched in the bottom of the pot. Then I place a couple of potatoes on top of the dirt and cover them with a couple more inched of dirt. As the potatoes grow and produce leaves, I add a couple of inched of dirt, chopped up old leaves, and maybe a sprinkling of compost when the plants reach about 5 inches above the soil.

Wordless Wednesday: My First Big Harvest of the Year

Blooming Potatoes

My potatoes are blooming. After the blooms are gone, I will be able to fish some new potatoes out of the pot.  Once the leaves die off, I will tip the pots over on to my asparagus beds and fish out the potatoes. The leaves, compost, straw, and soil from the potato pots will serve as a rich top dressing for the asparagus beds.

Amish Produce Auction

[Note: I purposely did not take any photos of the Amish out of respect for their beliefs about graven images.]

Last Friday, my sister, her friend Jerry (and now my new friend), and I went to the Amish produce auction in Greens Fork, Indiana. We went as a group because at these auctions, the produce is sold in lots. We agree on a lot of produce that we want to buy and then we split the lot after the auction. After the auction we went to a berry farm and bought some fresh strawberries.  Friday night, we had a barbecue and ate some of our purchases.

We bought some potatoes.  For our barbecue, we grilled the potatoes in foil with olive oil, garlic, sea salt, and rosemary.

We also bought zucchini, spring onions, and asparagus.  Jerry lived in Japan for several years and made us some decadent Japanese bar food-asparagus wrapped in bacon and grilled.

To make the bacon-wraped asparagus:
Rinse the asparagus, cut off the fibrous bottom, and cut the spears in half. Dip the half spears in a mixture of olive oil, black pepper, and sea salt.  Wrap each dipped spear in a half a strip of bacon and secure the bacon to the asparagus with a toothpick.  Grill the bacon-wrapped asparagus spears until the bacon becomes crispy.

Potato Progress

My potatoes in pots are thriving.  Tuesday, I added more planting medium  to the pot, because as the potatoes grow, their stems need to be covered with dirt.  I added a mixture of grass clippings, dried out leaves from last fall, and some soil to cover all but about 4 inches of the top of the stems.  Eventually, I will fill the pots to their tops and the pots will be topped with huge crowns of potato leaves and flowers.

Wet Weekend II-The Veggies

Today, I wanted to plant my tomato seedlings.  I looked at the weather forecast until our frost free date, May 10, and the predictions indicate that it shouldn't get below 45 degrees.  I know that the predictions aren't perfect, but I can always plant my plant swap tomatoes if a frost kills my planted tomatoes.  The plant swap isn't until May 16th, so I will have my replacement tomatoes should anything go wrong.

Instead of planting tomatoes, I took pictures of my vegetables.  Tomorrow will be my first day for lettuce harvesting.  I finally have enough to make a salad.  

My container potatoes are looking beautiful.  They are getting tall enough that it's time to add some more organic material to the pot.  I'll probably sprinkle in some aged compost and some leaves.

Maybe I will be able to do some work in my garden on Tuesday.  On Monday, I'm sure that the soil will be too wet to work with or walk on.

Wordless Wednesday-Veggies

Pop Up Potatoes

I checked my potato containers this morning and I found potato sprouts in all of them.  I'm so excited that they are coming out. Now if only I could see some peas popping up....

Preparing Potatoes for Planting

This year I am going to grow five different kinds of potatoes in addition to the potatoes that I've started from last year's leftovers.  I purchased certified seed potatoes that are red gold, all blue, carola, banana fingerling, and German butterball.  I chose these varieties based on taste and appearance.  I should have given more thought at the time I ordered to when they would mature.  All of the potatoes except for the all blue are late maturing varieties.  Oh, well.  Live and learn.  Next year, I'll add an early maturing variety and get rid of whichever variety is my least favorite.

The seed potatoes all had several eyes, so I needed to cut any potato that was larger than a golf ball into smaller pieces before planting.  Each piece needed to have at least a couple of eyes.

After I cut the potatoes into smaller pieces, I set them on newspaper to dry overnight.  They needed to form a callus over the cut area so that they would be less likely to rot once planted.

Here are the potatoes two days later with calluses.  

Growing Potatoes in Containers

Last year, I experimented with growing potatoes in containers.  I have a small garden, so planting them in the ground takes up too much space.  The potatoes were super easy to grow in the containers.    I had some left over potatoes from last year that started to chit (grow sprouts), so I decided to try starting them.  I think that these leftovers are Swedish peanut fingerling potatoes and red gold potatoes.  I worry a little about disease because these potatoes are not certified seed potatoes. However, since they will be in their own containers and in a separate garden from my other potatoes, I decided that it's worth the gamble.  I figure that I have nothing to lose, and quite frankly, I need to be playing around in the garden.

It's a little early to plant potatoes in Indianapolis, but the daytime temperatures are projected to be in the upper 50s for most of the next two weeks.  If we get beastly weather, I can always bring the containers inside and store them in my laundry room temporarily.  I intend to start my certified seed potatoes soon.  Since I actually have some money invested in them, I'm going to be more conservative about when I plant them.  I can hold off for a week or two until I'm sure that the weather will be warm enough to plant them.

The leftover chitted potatoes

I'm going to grow these 'extra' potatoes in the small vacant city lot/hidden garden at the end of the alley near my house.  Last year, my neighbor and I cleaned out all the trash and tree debris, cut down diseased trees, and started a raised bed.  She tested the soil and it's fine.  This year we will add more raised beds to the garden.

The hidden garden at the end of the alley

Here's how I started:

First, I mixed together some soil and compost.

Then I put a shovel full of the mixture into a tree-sized plastic nursery pot with good drainage.  Potatoes benefit from the compost because it conditions the soil and provides some disease resistance.

Next, I added a couple of handfuls of oak and other leaves to the pots to provide a little acidity since we have alkaline soil.  The leaves also help to lighten the soil mixture.  On top of the leaves, I placed 4 potatoes about 5 inches apart.

Then I added another layer of soil/compost mixture on top of the potatoes.

Finally, I added a couple of hands full of leaves on top of the soil mixture.  

Over the spring and summer, I will add compost, leaves, and maybe a little soil on top of the potatoes as the sprouts get to be 4 inches tall. I will add enough 'stuff' to cover an inch of them stem, so that at least 3 inches of potato foliage are exposed above the soil line. I will water regularly when it doesn't rain enough so that the potatoes don't go through dry spells.  About a week after the potatoes bloom, I'll start stealing some new potatoes.  Then I will wait to harvest the full grown potatoes until after the foliage dies back.  All I have to do to harvest the potatoes is to tip the pot over and pick out the spuds.

Seed Mania

I spent much of January and February every year in a funk because I don't get enough sunlight and I don't spend much time outside. I usually pass my time pouring over seed catalogs and websites. In the past, I have mostly grown flowering perennials in my garden, some herbs, and tomatoes. Last year, I started an asparagus bed and planted some raspberries. This year, I'm getting deeper into growing produce. I even dug out a perennial bed to make room for veggies!

Last year, I experimented with starting many of my plants from seed. I bought a shelving unit and attached shop lights under each shelf. I used this set up to grow seeds in my extra bedroom. My plants did quite well and I got an abundant harvest from them.

[Here is one of my tomato seedlings right after I potted it up in order to develop a strong root system.]

[On the porch, you can see some of the plants that I started under lights. They were on the porch to harden off before planting.]

This year, I am attempting even more plants and varieties. Here's some of what I have planned:

basils: cinnamon, genovese, lemon, bounty, Thai, opal, lime, sweet, magical Michael, osmin

other herbs: stevia, chives, oregano, parsley, chamomile, cilantro

tomatoes: Napa grape hybrid, brandywine, sweet tangerine hybrid, Wolford's wonder, Henderson's wins all, Fred Limbaugh potato top, chocolate stripes, blondkopfchen, bloody butcher, yellow stone, 1884, Italian heirloom

potatoes: all blue, banana fingerling, carola, German butterball, red gold

other veggies: lemon cucumbers, sweet success cucumbers, bush champion cucumbers, mesclun, spinach, zucchini, greensleeves beans, royal burgundy beans, super wax beans, carrots, sugar snap peas, onions, garlic, shallots

I didn't initially plan to plant this much, but I lost my mind in the seed catalogs. I'm sure that I will have enough seedlings for myself and all my neighbors :).