I am fortunate that seed potatoes are still for sale, because mine from last year are riddled with holes and I don’t want to use them for planting; we can add wire worm to my growing enemies list.
To avoid them, this year’s potatoes will go into a completely different bed, one that previously held carrots and onions.
I will also plant the alliterative purple Peruvian potatoes given to me by a friend because the predators ignored them last year, perhaps due to unfamiliarity. Whatever the reason, the Peruvian variety were left intact, smaller than the regular white potato but quite prolific. They’re about half the size of a regular white potato and quite a bit darker, so they’re harder to spot in the dark soil. Much like Russets, they’re a dry potato, quite tasty, and add new colour to potato salad.
Potatoes are often underappreciated. A well grown, fully mineralized potato contains 11 per cent protein, and makes a complete protein when combined with dairy products. Most of those nutrients are located just under and in the skin so I always cook my potatoes with the skins on. I believe that the tastier the plant, the more nutritious it is, and my homegrown potatoes taste great.
This year my potatoes are going in quite late because I’ve been busy, so I’m hoping the summer will be long enough to develop a good harvest, especially since the purple potatoes have chitted such long sprouts! Chitting potatoes means allowing them to sprout before putting them in the ground because apparently they grow better, but all that needs to be done is to allow the eyes to start growing. They can be cut into pieces too, just before planting as long as each piece contains two or three eyes, from which sprouts emerge. Some gardeners suggest leaving the cut pieces to develop a bit of a callus before planting, but this doesn’t seem necessary. As far as I know, it doesn’t matter which way the potato is oriented in the soil either, so after I’ve dug a trench down the centre of the row, I carefully lay the sprouted potatoes or pieces a foot apart and cover them with soil.
Once leaves protrude out of the soil, I hill them up by hoeing soil up from the sides, covering some of the leaves in the process. Hilling prevents the sun from turning the potatoes green, which would make us sick. When I see green on potatoes that I’ve picked, I cut off the green parts before I cook them for that reason.
About three weeks later, I hill up the potatoes again and then just leave them to flower. The nice thing about hilling potatoes is that one needn’t weed, merely pulling out the odd one during the season. Once the flowers have withered and the stems have fallen over, potatoes are ready to harvest, but I also like to harvest sweet, early potatoes before this, so I choose a few plants and harvest the entire roots from them.
Please contact mary_lowther@yahoo.ca with questions and suggestions since I need all the help I can get.
