Sometimes it seems like gardening success happens in spite of what you do. I guess it’s only right, a little payback for all those “I don’t know what went wrong” experiences.
Last September, when I was shopping for vegetable plants for my winter garden, a nursery employee mentioned that they would be getting in gourmet seed potatoes “in a few weeks.” I’d never grown potatoes, so I set aside one of my raised beds for potatoes and went back in a few weeks. At the nursery they told me it would be a “few weeks.”
This went on, with me going to the nursery every two weeks, until late November, when they admitted they didn’t know whether the potatoes would be in before spring.
In desperation, I bought some organic Yukon Golds at Whole Foods and decided to plant them. My mom, who has lots of potato-growing experience from Montana and as a child in Wyoming, was very skeptical, but she helped me dig the right-sized and correctly spaced holes. We planted them, and I began to watch for something to start growing.
Newly planted potatoes
Nothing in November. Nothing in December. Nothing in January. Clearly they had rotted away with all the rainy weather and I’d just have to plan on planting something else in the box for an early spring crop — maybe potatoes if they ever arrived at the nursery.
Suddenly, at the beginning of February, I saw little green leaves emerging, and within a few weeks, every single potato was growing happily.
The plants looked great, and before long Mom was helping me hill them up, at least as well as I could manage in the raised bed.
Potatoes by late March
We watched for blooms, which Mom said would signal that new potatoes were being formed underground. When nothing happened I googled around and found reassuring words that potatoes didn’t always bloom, so maybe there was hope yet.
Finally, earlier this week, I just couldn’t stand not knowing another minute (a recurring problem I have with root crops). I pulled one plant and dug out about a dozen potatoes, most about the size of an egg, a few larger. They were delicious!
So this morning, I pulled another. Voila! That’s a standard-sized dinner plate. They weighed a little over 2 pounds.
Newest of the new potatoes
Blight is caused by too fertile soil or mulch, as in manure especially, and by contamination either of fungal spores already in heavy, wet soil or by poor sanitation when working the potatoes. If the soil is relatively light and fast-draining, the seed potatoes (any live tuber) healthy, and you don’t over-feed, you should have a good crop with little effort. Hilling is important to keep the tubers from greening in sunlight (it’s toxic) and if you leave them long enough, you can get more tubers in the mounds. Holly
Yes, Ken, they were from a single plant! I had a dozen plants, and got roughly the same amount from each plant. My garden space is very limited, and I needed that box for my summer planting, so they all had to come out at once. Needless to say, my neighbors shared in the bounty.
I worried about blight and other horrors too, especially after reading about all the things that could go wrong. Maybe it was just luck, but my little spuds were flawless and very, very tasty.
This fall I think I’ll plant fingerlings.
Hi Chris, were those two pounds of potatoes from a single plant? Fantastic. I’ve been reading about potato blight and now I’m worried about that. We’ll see.
Wow – those look wonderful. And so early. Or at least for me.