Digging Potatoes

Today was the day of reckoning. Did I have any potatoes in my bin? Did the late blight take them all out? The weather was cooperating for a change. I didn't have time until Thursday to dig them up and the rain held off. In fact it was mostly sunny for the two days beforehand. After no rain for a week and a half it seemed like the stars were aligning for me.

I dug up a few shovelfuls of the compost filling the bin. No potatoes. Then what did I see? Could it be? A three inch potato stuck up its head up just waiting to be plucked out of the bin. Yes! Then nothing and more nothing. That was the only potato from that side of the bin. The other side had better luck. It seemed there was one plant that actually set potatoes up the stem. The potatoes weren't big, but hey they were potatoes.

Here they are in all their glory. OK so it wasn't a lot. I'm guessing Kennebecs don't like setting all along the stem. What made some do it and not others I'll never know. But I wasn't done yet. When I planted, I trench planted the potatoes before adding the bin. I still had the trenches to dig up.

The soil yielded lots of beautiful potatoes. There were some really large ones too. The largest sadly got pronged by my digging fork. It seems I'm not all that good at digging potatoes. I damaged quite a few in the process. Maybe I should let the skin harden more than two weeks?

Here is the bucket filled with the potatoes from the trenches. That seems more like it. The yield for the 4x4 area was 15lbs 8oz. I used 2lbs of seed potatoes. This is not a stellar yield but not too bad considering the blight. The bin basically did nothing. It made me work really hard, first filling it up and then emptying it.

I did lose some potatoes from blight. Kennebec is resistant, but frankly the potatoes had blight in them since June so it is not surprising. Oospores (spores from sexual reproduction), which can survive without a living host, are rarely formed - though it has been possible since the 1990s, supposedly it rarely happens that the two pathogens meet to mate in the northern states. Zoospores (asexual spores) can't survives without a living host. So the odds are that the only way this nasty disease will survive to next year in my garden is if I leave any tubers in the ground. If you have ever dug potatoes you will know that it is hard to get all the tubers without missing any. It is common for potatoes to "volunteer" from missed tubers.

When I was piling up the bin's compost (which will be added to the top of the solanaceae bed when all the plants are removed), I saw the above potato peeking out. I even missed potatoes in the compost that I moved. Later this fall I'll double dig the old potato bed. This was the plan from last spring and seems like a really good idea. I'm contemplating sifting the soil as I go just to make sure I've got them all out.

Well the potatoes were a lot of work. I'm really loving eating them though. Last nights dinner was the first of the broccoli - YUM - and garlic mashed potatoes with homegrown potatoes, garlic and oregano. OK so I had some parmesan encrusted chicken to go with it. I can't wait to try some homemade french fries.