Thursday, May 14, 2009

May 14, 2008

Well, I finally took the plunge.  I've been looking at the box of yukon gold potato seeds and leftover un-eaten potatoes for a month now, thinking I should find a place to plant them.  You recall that they're no good for my potato bins as they only set fruit once (early varieties do that).  So, I came up with a plan to use up some of the open squares in bed #4.  It turned into quite a fun ordeal for my youngest and I.  Look at what I had to deal with.



I like to call this "attack of the potato seed", hehe.  My youngest had a blast playing with the shredded bills that we used to store them in.

To prep the bed, I did what Mel suggests and added a bit of aged compost to each square.



Then I mixed it in with the top few inches and dug a hole for the seed potato.  It was very tough to curl the foot-long sprouts around in a circle and cover it with an ich or so of dirt. 



I sure hope I didn't need to burry them deeper.  I forget how deep to plant the seed?  Is it an inch or two or should I throw more dirt on top?  If so I'll use up another bag of potato Mel's Mix that wouldn't be available for my potatoes.  I'm hoping not to need to buy more ingredients.

Some of them were even harder to plant because they had multiple thick sprouts sticking straight up.



Sorry for the blurry pic, my phone doesn't take good closeups.  Believe me, this is the better of the two pics I took. /sigh.

Here's my bed fully planted.



As you can see, I still have two rows in front of my peas and part of a row between my carrots and potatoes.  I plan on utilizing the short row for more radishes since they're one and done.

I also wanted to say that my soil isn't bad, it's just dry and not as rich compared to pure compost, hehe.

Well, that's enough for me. My computer's acting up since Farm Town on Facebook gave me a malware virus thing.  Having the harvest time removing it too.  Oh, if you're on Facebook and play Farmtown, let me know, I could always use more neighbors! hehe.

Enjoy your garden!

7 comments:

  1. That's the same way my potatoes in the 4 x 9 box were planted. Although...I used storebought seed potatoes, which didn't have something from outer space growing out of them! Ha. Anyway, I hope they do well for ya.

    EG

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  2. That is an amazing amount of sprouts! Yikes!

    I just pulled the last of the stored "Butte" potatoes out of the box this evening to make a large potato salad (have company coming this weekend) - they were getting some good sized sprouts on them because the weather is warming up - but nothing like your monster sprouts.

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  3. Hi Sinfonian! Greetings from northern Wyoming!

    Your potato bed looks great. I'm hoping to get my Yukon Golds planted today.

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  4. Wow - those are some crazy lookin' seed taters! It's like they could hardly wait to get back into the bin and in their impatience just decided to grow their way out there. ;^)

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  5. You've inspired me to try some potatoes....ok, maybe next year. I'm still scared.

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  6. You should have loads of spuds this year. I have not planted my bin yet. I am filling my new beds tomorrow so once that is done I will be able to plant them finally. I am also growing potatoes in a pot and I am planting up 3 compost bags with them too. mmm potatoes!

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  7. Rich -- I've never seen potatoes do that before LOL!!! My goodness. Yes, I would say that it's time to get those things planted.

    You garden is looking great -- nice and tidy! This year I didn't put the strings back up to separate the squares. Now I wish I would have. It really gives the garden a more organized look.

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