Potato harvest underway


That is two hundred fourth one lbs. Of Kennebec potatoes harvested and donated last week from my Big Tex Urban Farm! I’m digging my last row tomorrow night. Hoping for another big load to give away!

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nice haul! someone is going to be eating a lot of mashed potatoes…

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Mashed potatoes, potatoes au gratin, baked potatoes, French fries, etc! Exited to see how many pounds I get to donate this week!

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Good job Drew. I’m surprised you have so many so soon, but yer in Texas, so… Did you say those are mostly one pounders? Or 200lb of one pounders?

How’s the rest of your crops doing?

We planted five 40ft rows of taters a month ago, and promptly got 7" of rain the following week. Surprise, they all rotted in the ground. So we replanted a couple weeks ago of Red Pontiac and Kennebec. Some of the K’s have sprouted, and thankfully we’ll do as good as you did.

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Our planting and harvest times are very different I’m sure. We plant in early Feb. and harvest in June. They did very well. I really like Red Lasota but had a hard time finding them in time this year. Onions, Green beans, greenhouse tomatoes and cucumbers have done really well. Waiting patiently for peppers to crank up. Black eyes are starting to crank up. I’ll post more pics soon!

Drew

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I love to can potatoes…Makes sense to me since you have to cook them anyway. And having canned potatoes makes easy garlic mashed potatoes all winter. I also add them to stews and other recipes where cooked potatoes are called for.

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Never done that before. I need to learn. Thank you for the idea. My wife would love ghat she is a big time potato fan.

Drew

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I might try canning them this year. Last year I dehydrated, and wasn’t happy with the results. They never would fully rehydrate and stayed a little al dente.

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I’m growing Red Thumb, an early fingerling. The plants came up in good order and look very healthy, but it’s way past time for them to have bloomed. The potatoes I planted much later are blooming away.

Think it’s time to go poking around in there and see what’s up. It’s the potato salad season!

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Just harvested this year’s first potatoes for dinner. About three pounds from one plant. I think it is Red Norland (just hardware store supply). They look good! Parsley potatoes and schnitzel for dinner!
Odd thing: I dug garlic this morning and the soil was full of works. Around the potatoes, nothing. They are adjacent beds.

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Went poking into the Red Thumbs. I grow my potatoes under straw, so usually all I have to do is pull it aside and there are potatoes that I can pick off the vines and let the rest grow

Today, I dug a bit and did see a few small ones, so obviously they’re going ahead w/o blooming But I think I’ll wait a bit to dig or pull plants

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Ime curious why you planted so late. In missouri I try to get mine in the ground as close to st. Patrick’s day as possible. Potatoes are being dug now here

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The ground was very wet most of the spring, and temps were cool, including a May freeze. Because of that, I didn’t get the ground turned until late April, and then my tractor broke down. So, I had to wait on my bro-in-law to disk it for us the second week of May. So, we didn’t get taters in the ground until mid-May. A lot of our other veggies were also planted about that time. Tomato and peppers were transplanted in June as well.

The week after the seed potatoes were planted, we had about 7" of rain over a week’s time. So, they ended up rotting in the ground. We had to replant two weeks ago, and they’re just now sprouting.

This spring was maddening with all the rain, and cold, and then flash floods over the last month. Hopefully we’ll have a decent harvest later this season, if I can keep the $@#% deer out of my gardens.

I was outside today trying to get some deck boards put down, and had to stop three times because of brief downpours. Drives me loco! Tomorrow I have to mow and try to plant my strawberry replacements. Hope I can get it all in between storms.

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I see potato bugs in my potato garden. Is that bad or should I spray with something like spinosad?

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Will potatoes produce good this late. Ime just curious

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I don’t know, I guess we’ll see. If we have a warm summer, and a warmer than average early fall, they might do well. I know there’s something about the length of days in how it relates to potatoes, so that may be a factor with them starting this late? Maybe someone could comment on this issue? This is the latest we ever set them out, along with some other crops.

Our efforts in three seasons here to grow taters have been a mixed bag. The first year we grew Irish Cobbler’s, and it was our best haul by far. And that was in a relatively small plot, maybe 30x40ft. We harvested enough to store and eat into the next spring. I think those were planted in April. That was also our best year for beans and corn. We’ve had very poor production from those two crops the last two years, but I think it had to do with poor soil, which we have amended this year.

Last year we planted in a much larger plot, about 30x50, and it did very poorly. We planted those at the end of March, and they started out well, but we had a hard freeze in the middle of May, and they got bit pretty bad. They were about foot tall bushes by then, and they never seemed to recover. A bunch of rain in the summer didn’t help either. It was very disappointing that we didn’t get very much from that large plot. We did have a great sweet potato harvest for the number of plants we started.

What varieties did you plant? Are you saying you’ve already harvested some or others in your area? You guys have had a lot of rain this year, probably more than us, so I wonder how much an impact that’s been, with fruits as well as veggies.

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Yeah, they can shred those leaves in short order. I bought some Bonide powder that uses Spinosad last week specifically for potatoes. We haven’t used it yet, as our plants are just now sprouting, and no bug pressure yet. If you have some Spinosad spray, that ought to do alright, but I don’t know what concentration would be used for taters.

That might work for you, or, I know my wife says Sevin dust is what they’ve used in the past. Thats a more conventional treatment, but some folks still use it.

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I’ve heard of people further south planting fall crops of potatoes, so it’s worth a shot. Might need to water alot in August, if it’s dry.

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Did y’all plant any potatoes this year, and if so, how are they doing? Maybe you guys haven’t had as much rain and have had better success?

We had some varmits, deer I imagine, get in our potato patch and munch on some of our sprouts. Don’t know why they’d go after taters, but I guess if it’s green, then it’s good enough for them.

Hundreds of green acres around us, and they have to hit our plots. It’s just maddening…

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That’s weird. I wouldn’t have thought potato greens would have been appealing. Fortunately, we don’t have much animal pressure here (between a subdivision and the interstate), just some rabbits that nibble a bit.
I put in Red Norland and something else from the hardware store in one of the 4x20 beds close to the house. I dug one plant worth yesterday and got about four pounds. So good yield, I think. I did mulch very heavily, like 8 inches, with compost and grass clippings, and I think that helped even out the rain. Our “normal” rain pattern seems to be four inches in a couple days, then two weeks dry! Averages out as good rainfall, but is hard on plants.
Btw, boiled up with and obscene amount of butter, yum!

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