You say poe-tah-toe I say poe-tay-toe

Mmmm, french fries...

either way they are yummy and we had a great harvest on these!

This is the remaining potatoes from this years harvest. We are well stalked I would say, and we sold quite a few through out the season. We purchased our seed potatoes from Wood Prairie, and got a mix of caribe ( red skins), all Blue (purple), Butte (russet) and Rosegold (yellow meat). Although we planted 2 weeks late, and had a lot of broken stems and battered leaves from the June hail storm, our harvest was great! And all of our potatoes were super yummy. We sold plenty at market, and now our potato bin ( 5 pallets screwed together) is still 3/4 full which should get us through the year, give us plenty of seed for next year ( actually our seed potatoes are in those 5 gallon orange buckets) and leave us with more to sell if we choose to early next market season.

All of the potatoes have a slightly different taste, the purples have a hint of sweetness to them and the yellows are not so good fried (they are best as a masher). At market we had the most requests for the purples, even though that was our smallest yielding crop, so next year we will increase our plantings of those, and cut back on the reds or yellows. The russet’s (our french fry supply) did not go to market this year, but will next year.

What did I learn this year about potatoes? Besides they actually do survive a hail storm? A thick layer of mulch is very important unless you like weeding (luckily we mulched well), because after the plants grow large it is nearly impossible to add more mulch, the potatoes grow between the seeds and the leaves, so the deeper you plant the higher yield you will receive, and potatoes that are exposed to the light (that pop through the mulch) will turn green and get eaten by slugs, or pecked at by chickens.

What will we be doing differently next year with our potatoes? Not much, we will be using our own seed, so our varieties won’t change, although we will plant more purples and russets. But we will be planting using the hay bale method (since we have such an abundance of old hay). The hay bale method is where you set the potato on the ground (not in a hole) and cover it with 6 inches of hay. This is supposed to make more uniformly rounded (prettier) potatoes and take the back breaking out of the harvest (since no digging is involved) it will also allow us to use a section of the field that has been worked less (has more rocks in the ground). We are actually considering putting the potatoes over an area that has a very shallow dirt area because the shale is close to the surface; after planting the potatoes using this method their for a few years it should increase the amount of usable substrate from the decomposing hay and nutrients (manure) added to it. I sure hope it works.

~ by Robin on October 26, 2008.