I just hauled in my first crop of potatoes. I didn't get them in the ground as early in the Spring as I had meant, but they grew anyway. I was surprised to see the nice, little purple blooms they produced in mid-Summer.
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| Purple blooms on my potato plants |
The plants died about a month ago, so I decided to go ahead and try sticking my fingers in the soil to see what was there. I was happy to find about 10 potatoes, ranging from small pebble to fist size.
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| My first potato crop, washed and ready for cooking |
Since my first crop isn't all that plentiful, I cooked them all together in the crock pot with a pork loin and some other veggies.
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| Crock pot dinner: pork loin, carrots, onions and potatoes |
They were great!
In the next month, I'm going to work some compost into the veggie garden soil, so that the dirt is a little looser for next year. Next Spring, I'll be trying to get them in the ground as soon as the freezes are over - mid March - and keeping them watered so the plants stick around a little longer and the potatoes can get larger.
Maybe after one more successful crop of cheap seed potatoes, I'll order some different fun varieties to experiment with, like "All-Blue" or "Fingerlings."
Compost! Do you make your own? ...make it over the winter? Buy some from a local source? Any reccomendations about compost? --Brian
ReplyDeleteCongrats on your first potatoes!
ReplyDeleteThis morning's newspaper talked about fall crops and mentioned potatoes, like you could still plant and have before winter?
You might want to check it out. It was Betty Culpepper's article which I will save for you, in case it is not found online.