My dad had the best vegetable garden in our neighborhood. He spent MANY hours planting, weeding and harvesting his vegetables. You could often find me right behind him asking questions and soaking up his wisdom.
My dad passed on almost 3 years ago now. Not a morning of planting or weeding goes by without my thinking of him and saying "thanks dad".
One thing I have always been fascinated with is the potato plant. To me, it's like Christmas when you did one up and see what has grown underneath. This is how I plant them.
Each potato has several "eyes." Each eye has the potential to become a potato plant. Therefore, you will need to cut the potato so that each piece has at least one eye.
The cut pieces need to "scab over" before you put them in the ground. This takes a couple of days. This is what they will look like ...
Now they are ready to plant. Potatoes like to be planted in "hills." I hoe up some soil into a mound and poke the potato piece in the dirt. As the plant grows, keep mounding dirt up the side of the plant. Should you see those nasty potato bugs...you could pick them off (if organic) or there are products that you can "dust" them with. I've used the poultry dust from Fleet Farm.
Till the harvest....Blessings from Wisconsin
My dad passed on almost 3 years ago now. Not a morning of planting or weeding goes by without my thinking of him and saying "thanks dad".
One thing I have always been fascinated with is the potato plant. To me, it's like Christmas when you did one up and see what has grown underneath. This is how I plant them.
Each potato has several "eyes." Each eye has the potential to become a potato plant. Therefore, you will need to cut the potato so that each piece has at least one eye.
The cut pieces need to "scab over" before you put them in the ground. This takes a couple of days. This is what they will look like ...
Now they are ready to plant. Potatoes like to be planted in "hills." I hoe up some soil into a mound and poke the potato piece in the dirt. As the plant grows, keep mounding dirt up the side of the plant. Should you see those nasty potato bugs...you could pick them off (if organic) or there are products that you can "dust" them with. I've used the poultry dust from Fleet Farm.
Till the harvest....Blessings from Wisconsin
my mother would hoe the hole. it was my job to go behind her and drop in the potato pieces with the eye sprouts. :)
ReplyDeleteFor some reason we haven't had good luck with potatoes in the garden. We trying the trash barrel method this year. Have you ever tried planting potatoes in a container? We're curious to see how it goes.
ReplyDeleteOh my...we planted a bunch of potatoes again this year. We didn't wait for the "scab over" process. I'm sure our bounty will grow once we do it right! Thanks for the informative post Dicky Bird! :~) Blessings from Michigan...:)
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