On our homestead we are always working towards meeting our needs in the most practical (and delicious) ways.
They are an easy crop, store well and can be eaten in a myriad of ways. They are the easiest staple food for us to grow, and are a great comfort food loaded with nutrition.
Big thanks and respect to all the ingenious folks from South America who bred such a dizzying array of diversity from a mildly toxic tuber. In Peru we both realized how little we knew about this important food crop. Potato culture is alive and strong there. Why are they known as Irish potatoes anyway???
But what about all those rocks?
Digging for potatoes or.....
From Rocks to Spuds
Well if you've been following us you'll know we have inherited an excess of rocks in the soil. Slowly but surely the piles grow as we move rocks from the soil into piles at the edge of the garden. When breaking ground, we will usually put potatoes in as a first crop. They aren't too picky and can tolerate poor soils better than other crops. That said fertile loamy soils grow the best spuds. For us, it's just about getting some food on the table!
The digging is done by mattock or grub hoe. Good luck tryin to get anywhere with a shovel! As we dig furrows, the rocks just keep coming. Although it's really hard work, I can attest to the joy of digging my hand into a previously worked beds to find rich humus where rocks used to be. As we remove the rocks, we're making space for biomass.
Planting
We purchased seed potatoes from out local feed store. Eventually once we can get long term storage sorted, we will select our favorite varieties to grow, but for now good 'ol Kennebec and Yukon Gold do just fine. After cutting the spuds to one or 2 eyes, we let let dry out for a day before planting.
It's so satisfying (and forgiving) to plant potatoes. They're pretty darn hardy and want to grow. I remember the first year we grew them and as we ate our fill we were remarking how satisfying and grounded it feels to literally fill our belly and feed our bodies from the soil. This fuels the fire after many hours of digging.
My Mom and sister were here visiting in early April and helped us get 50 pounds in the ground. This is twice the amount we seeded last year and have started harvesting the first patch. We limed the soil and added some wood ash before planting. By no means was the soil of excellent tilth, but plant we did. We planted the sections of tubers as deep as was reasonable (about 3 inches) and waited for the shoots to show themselves.
Low Maintenance
I love potatoes for a lot of reasons, one is that once planted we can basically walk away and come back to harvest. I weeded and mounded the potatoes once this season, and watered them a few times. We actually never got around to mulching (oops) but even with little care we're enjoying fresh potatoes on the daily. While we could certainly increase yields and optimize our plantings, it is very rewarding to grow nuggets of mineral rich carbohydrates with relatively little effort, while also "breaking new ground" and de-rocking for future garden use.
Harvest
Once the majority of the plants have died back, we start on the search for treasure. Using a potato fork (wonder why it's called that) we carefully dig at the base of the plants. I always laugh when the amount of rocks harvested is bigger than potatoes. It's like we're growing spuds to further incentivize de-rocking! It makes me think of tossing grain to encourage pigs to dig and till an area.
It's still a joy to fill buckets or crates with plump (and some not so plump) tubers. For growing in poor soil riddled with rocks, I'm happy to harvest tubers. The key here is not stabbing too many as they won't store well. The victims of such an event are eaten sooner and not stored. I like to get my hands in there once I've lifted the soil as there are always some spuds hiding there after the first sweep.
Making Them Last
For some of the spuds we planted later we will leave in the ground as long as possible. The ones we did harvest sat at room temp in a covered milk crate to dry out a bit and cure for storage. Ideally they would be kept in a cellar at around Earth temp. We are looking at simply digging a hole and burying buckets or barrels to keep them cool. In the long term we plan to build a banging root cellar, but this year it's looking like good old fashioned hole will work just fine.
Our neighbors swear by canning their potatoes. I love canned food for the durability and convenience, but I'm not overly interested in canning something that has the staying power of potatoes. In prior years, we kept them quite well in our yurt, even though it's not a temperature regulated space.
but what about dem rocks!?!?!
Serve Them Up
Did we mentioned that we love potatoes? We have been eating them lately in chicken soup, as hash browns, mashed... I might make latkes soon too (a type of shredded potato fritter). Not getting sick of them yet.
We like baked, scalloped, fried, mashed, frittered, salad, soup and made into bread!
We like baked, scalloped,
Fried, mashed, frittered, salad, soup
And made into bread!
- cecicastor
I'm a bot. I detect haiku.
that's a good one!
:D glad to see that this diverse array was made into a haiku ;) <3
The potatoes are very delicious , I prefer French fries with salt and ketchup.
We are digging up our potatoes here in Virginia. we planted 4 varieties this year. Purple (not sure of the actual name), Kennebec, Russet and Reds. Next year - we will be just planting the Kennebec and Reds. we found they are the most prolific this year and have given us the best yield per foot. My favorite way to eat/prepare them is roasted with a little rosemary.
Mmm, Rosemary roasted is the way my dad cooked them. Good feedback on varieties. How do you like the taste like f the purples?
You're reminding me I want to build an oven cause there's nothing like toasted spuds!
yes, an oven would be amazing - I bet the added Smokey flavor of a brick style oven would be amazing. The purples don't have a particularly unique flavor to me. nutritionally they are not much different from a standard yellow/white potatoes in terms of macro nutrients. However, they are loaded with antioxidants which makes them worth the trouble. Also, they look really good in a roasted potatoes medley. Perhaps you have inspired my next post where I will share my recipe for roasted potatoes.
I love potatoes and eat them all ways possible! I love meatless lentil "shepards pie" with a nice thick layer of mashed potatoes on top. Baked and bubbly it is so nourishing and comforting.
You make potato growing look so easy! Would you believe that has been my most challenging crop? I think it is the clay soil. Do you ever have to deal with potato beetles? We do have a small crop planted this year and for the first time it looks very promising.
I canned some potatoes last year just to try it. In my opinion canned potatoes are terrible. The flavour and texture changes and I find them very unpleasant to eat. I'll never do it again. I have been wondering about dehydrating potatoes. I've never done that but it might be interesting to do a little bit that way.
Fresh is best though. I love your idea of the buckets in the ground. I wonder how cold is too cold when doing that? I'll have to look into that.
Beautiful crop!
The first dehydrated vegetable I ever saw was a dehydrated sliced potato. it was being used as a demonstration on how to rehydrate and use dehydrated potatoes.
It looked disgusting, gray and hard, in its dehydrated form. But she dropped it in a glass of water and an hour later it looked like it had just been sliced off a potato. Amazing!
I've not tried to dehydrate them myself, as I have a root cellar with a potato box and they keep fine there.
Mmm the Shepard pie sounds lovely. Another comment that makes we wish we had an oven although I should try the in the solar oven..
Huh, sorry to hear you've had issues growing them, But stoked this year's crop looks good. Haha. I imagine canned potato being the YUCK you described. Not tickled by the Idea.
My 2 cents on ground temps is that is would be cool below the frost line. It should stay at a constant 55 f or 15 C or so. The earth stays cool if you just keep diggin.
In the backyard we have some potato plants but they are not ready yet and some of them died because we had too much rain these past few weeks.
But there are still a few left that are alive I hope to show them soon :P
Who doesn't like potatoes right haha, my favorites are when they are fried
Cheers @mountainjewel!
Sorry to hear you lost some. We got almost not rain this season and the plants and dying back. but still decent tubers. Not much to do with too much rain..
Best of luck with the harvest.
Roasted are best. We called them new potatoes when I was young and we grew lots in our garden. Small, roasted with rosemary and I'm sure lots of butter seems all veggies got lots of butter when cooked by my mom. Yum
Veggies and butter seems like a great recipe for delicious indeed. We snuck a few new spuds a month back and thoroughjyl enjoyed them. I wish our Rosemary was bigger, cause you're giving me ideas.
Do you have the potato beetles there?
I had a few but not many. My potatoes are a long way from ready to harvest.
Not one. But we certainly have squash bugs. Yikes. I've been kind hands off and have lost a lot of plants. I'll just see which do best and keep saving seed from them.
Did y'all celebrate world naked gardening day?
All day every day! Heck yah. Naked gardening is my religion. Jk, but for real clothes just get dirty and in the way.
haha yeah I totally understand, I threatened my neighbors I'd be partaking in the national naked gardening day. They don't have to worry though, they'd just think there was a Wookie convention in town.
Thanks for this very instructive (semi-pornographic) post. 😁
I've decided just today that I want to try to grown on my land in a way that makes me able to feed myself, even though I don't plan on only eating what I grow. I don't think I'll be growing broccoli, but I'll buy it when I can, for example.
Now I'm wondering about potatoes, because I love them! Do you think they would stand any chance in Taos? We do get cold weather part of the year. But the ground is mostly sand, so there would have to be raised beds with lots of bought soil. Then storage... wouldn't be able to be in the ground I don't think. Hmm.
The semi porn is not intentional. Wren's always asking me to put clothes on, but it's just so hot! Glad you enjoyed the post though..
We have a good friend in Taos who grows amazing garlic. Potatoes are resilient and I'm sure you could grow them well. Mulch and organic matter go a LOnG way in improving soil conditions. Think of folks growing potatoes in Siberia.. The climate would support spuds IMO.
All the best in your potato endeavors.
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now.....THAT'S....how you harvest some taters!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Ha, I was just thinking about digging up some of my lawn and making a small potato planting field. So nice to see Ini in his nature gown ( naked) I miss walking around naked too.