I've had to restrain myself for much of July, champing at the bit to begin starting seeds and planning where to establish the next adventure. It didn't help that I shelled out close to $50 for a seed order, an order that I started and edited several times over before finally placing. I got adventurous and dreamed of parsnips, turnips, and beets. But most of all, I dreamed of potatoes.
Irish potatoes were a mainstay in my parents' garden when I was growing up. Age makes memories fonder, and now as I look back on my early gardening experiences about 30 years ago, I can now say I fondly remember laying out the rows of potatoes, digging the holes, placing seed potatoes, covering them up, etc. Rows upon rows of white potatoes, followed by rows upon rows of red potatoes. My great-grandfather had a saying about planting potatoes on Good Friday and harvesting by the 4th of July. That's all fine and good if you have the flexibility in the garden to till up just one section, but we plowed our garden which meant it got fit in sometime around the beginning of May. Nonetheless, we would raise enough potatoes to last all winter long. To me, no garden is complete without potatoes, and it was frustrating the first few years that I tried growing them in my first attempted garden in the front yard.
I believe the online seed catalogs have it out for us southern gardeners. We can grow potatoes spring and fall, but most only carry seed potatoes for spring. And they lull you into believing they will ship at the time appropriate to your growing zone, only to have the package arrive in May, which is great if you live in the upper Midwest but about two months behind schedule for those of us trying to beat the heat. This time I tried staying on top of it, and in July I discovered one company had seed potatoes available then and there. Dakota Pearl, here we go!
I've come to realize, talking with some of my gardening friends, that Irish potatoes are not a common garden crop in Alabama. So it was by trial and error over the last three years I have finally gotten the routine down pat. This spring I was rewarded with a respectable crop of Yukon Golds. And now thanks to Gurneys.com and their Dakota Pearl variety, here's a how-to pictorial on planting potatoes as I put in my first attempt for a fall crop.
Prep the soil. Potatoes really do prefer loose, somewhat sandy soil. There's a reason they grow so well in central Wisconsin and southern Idaho. The beauty of gardening in raised beds is that they allow you to put together any soil type you want. In this case, it's a native soil mixed with commercial garden soil and a healthy dose of composted horse manure. Loose, fluffy, beautiful! And most importantly, no potato crop in this bed this year. Rotation is a good thing, and key for controlling some of the garden pests that invade around here.
Time to hoe! The point is to break up and loosen the soil after removing the previous crop (zucchini plants) plus work in the composted manure I had top-dressed while the previous crop was growing. I'm not aiming for fine and powdery, just mostly homogenous. The hard part is not to get overzealous with the hoeing so that the dirt doesn't end up on the path beside the raised bed.
Read the directions. Dig a furrow accordingly. Growing up we would dig individual holes, but here I simply don't have the space. A trench will have to do.
With seed potatoes, you can cut each one into pieces so long as each piece has an "eye." Because these have already sprouted a little it's pretty easy to tell where the viable eyes are. In this case, because I only have 8 feet of growing space, about a third of these babies are heading off to my friend's garden.
Having a trowel with inches labeled on it is handy for checking the depth. The seed potatoes need to be deep enough that the crop doesn't all develop at the surface. For most gardeners, planting too deep means there may be problems with rot before the sprouts can emerge. For my garden, because the native soil under the raised bed is hard, planting too deep means the potatoes do not develop in the ideal soil structure.
Cover the potatoes - I prefer a garden rake so I have better control over the soil.
And wait. Except that I'm in the middle of a mini-drought so I'm breaking out the sprinkler so that the poor things get enough water to develop roots and send up their precious ruffled first leaves.
Here we are, a little over a month later, potatoes well on their way. It would be better if it wasn't so hot so that they stay a little more short-and-squat for now rather than getting tall and rangy. No worries though, when they start to get unwieldy they can simply flop over the side of the raised bed and stay out of the way of the root vegetables that now occupy the other side of the bed. But that's another post.
It would also be better if the armyworms that were feeding on the tomatoes didn't decide to take up residence on the potatoes - which is why they have a liberal dusting of Sevin.
