The Potato Experiment

This year (2020) was my first foray into growing potatoes. I came to this decision after watching a show on Prime from Ireland that featured exclusively easy to grow veg. Potatoes were the very first item they showcased and yes, it looked pretty darned easy. 

 Even after gardening for 3 years, I still consider myself an amateur. My very first attempt went poorly. I didn't realize that vegetables needed to be fed... Year number 2 went really well. I had so much zucchini that I shredded and dehydrated it (of course, forgetting it in my cupboard for over a year). And year number three went poorly as well. The weather in New Hampshire varies considerably and our abundance of critters doesn't help anything either. Needless to say, I'm getting discouraged. I decided to go back to basics and try something simpler.

For fun, I followed the example experiment done on the show I mentioned. I planted potatoes in a raised bed as well as in containers. After the first couple weeks, I added more dirt to mound the potatoes up. I had some pretty good sized mounds, but the containers weren't deep enough for much more dirt. Yes, the greenery grew crazily out of the container potatoes. The greens on the ones in the raised bed certainly got tall as well, but not as bad as the container ones.

About 2 months after planting, I decided to take a looksie at what was happening in the containers. I had read on a blog that "new potatoes," those tiny potatoes you can roast up real easily, might be available 55 days after planting. Well, I pulled one of those suckers out and there were only the tiniest little orbs of potato growing in there. Not even recognizable really. So I stuffed it back in and continued to wait.

Conventional wisdom says to water your potatoes in the summer when they look thirsty. So I did that. They're supposed to flower and be ready for harvesting a couple weeks after the foliage dies off. Six months later and none of this had happened. I decided at this point just to dig up what I had and to start another batch. Since it was August and getting late in the season, I needed to get some more plants going in order to have a supply over winter that would be large enough to protect in a cold frame outside.

Here's my initial harvest.

Mind you, this was from 6 mounds of potatoes in a raised bed. Honestly, the container taters didn't produce any worth saving. I got a mix of Yukon Gold, Russet, and Red potatoes. Tiny, but delicious. Absolutely delicious, actually. The best potatoes I've ever eaten. That red one on the bottom? Literally the best one. So why such small potatoes? My guess is that I needed to mound them up with more dirt. The more dirt, the more potatoes they'll make. It's also possible that they don't get enough sun. Even though the garden is in the sunniest spot in the yard, the house does create a shadow as do 2 trees throughout the day as the position of the sun changes.

About a week after the initial harvest, I invested in a set of 4, 15-gallon potato bags I found on Amazon. I planted a potato in each of 2 bags and began the process again. Then, in September, I did another one. The first week of October, I'll move the existing potatoes to my new cold frame. In November, I intend to start another potato bag. 

Now, a potato supposedly matures in about 10 weeks. Hopefully the August potatoes will be flowering by November 15th. That's being generous. I will update this post as everything progresses.

So far, I'm having a lot of fun with this. I'm at the point where I'm thinking of potatoes as "my thing" and am envisioning myself giving away sacks of little potatoes to my family as gifts. Everyone should give growing some taters a try, really. The process is minimally time consuming and supplies are fairly inexpensive.

As I progress in my Potato Experiment I'll be sure to share what I've done to recycle soil, store them taters, and how to process them if they start to turn and there's an excess. Thanks for reading! If you've got a potato story of your own I'd love to hear it!