Picking Potatoes

       Back on April 6th of this spring I put my Kennebec potato starts in the ground.  I ran out of garden space in the back yard for potatoes, so took the leftover starts over to my park garden.

      These two trenches were about eight feet long, and the potato starts are about a foot apart in each row.  The bed itself was actually the remains of about eight inches of leaves covered with mushroom soil from the previous year when I was trying to wipe out a weed invasion.  There was no prep this year, just using a hoe to make the trenches.  In went the potato pieces and the trenches were refilled.

      The picture above shows the potato patch on the left as of June first.  Potato beetles found the patch a couple of weeks ago, and although insecticidal soap had kept them somewhat in check, I found the adult beetles in force this morning.  I dug my hand under one plant, expecting to find only a few new potatoes, but was surprised to find a couple of good sized spuds.  Decided then to harvest the whole small bed to take away the beetle food supply.

      The vines had only started to yellow and had not collapsed at all, so I would not have harvested yet if not for the beetle problem.  But the good news is, the potatoes look great, and were harvestable by hand by simply pulling up the plants.  The potatoes had formed in the leaf layer, and were essentially sitting on top of the harder soil.

      This picture shows how the potatoes just pulled out with the rest of the plant.  Then pulled them off the roots and put them in the harvest bucket.

      What a great harvest.  From just the small patch of leftover seed potatoes at the park.  Wonder what the bigger patch will yield.