turn the earth with my coon and searching for spud with my unfinished hands contribute back a torrent of childhood store . Every summertime my mother would take my comrade and me to help an elderly granger and his sister harvest from their large kitchen garden . Their white potato harvest alone would put my entire front - yard garden plot of land to shame . The farmer ’s garden contained several 50 - foot rows of large , tan potatoes — enough to sate their root basement in the Blue Ridge Mountains for the fall and winter seasons . The white potato harvest would take all mean solar day . My chum and I would inevitably return home tucker ; covered in severely - earned exertion and the benighted mountain loam .
in the first place this calendar month I harvested the spud in my modest urban garden . The 4 - by-4 - foot potato plot produced well over 100 genus Tuber of varying sizes . We ’ve been using them in everything from scalloped potatoes to a French potato salad featuring tarragon , yet I still had enough to share with several thankful neighbors .
Picking My Potatoes
When considering which variety of murphy to constitute , I needed to take into report the harsh South Carolina summertime , which bring in high spirits humidity , excessive passion and variable rainfall . I pick out the Kennebec variety for my garden base on recommendations from the South Carolina extension service , which published a series of veggie and yield factsheets with recommended cultivar for nurseryman and granger in the province .
Kennebec potatoes are a large oval bone - flesh murphy that reaches adulthood between 80 and 100 days in most regions . Known for their thin , tan - colored hide and legato regular surface , Kennebec are regarded as high - volume producers with expert disease impedance to common potato viruses and blight .
When selecting the correct potato for your garden , I strongly suggest contacting your local extension federal agent to see which cultivars thrive in your particular clime .
The Mounding Method
I order my cum potatoes online this winter and they arrived live and well in the late saltation . The seeded player potatoes were quite small ( a little larger than a golf globe ) , so I plant the integral potato rather than cutting them . The potatoes were planted using the traditional hill row method . I dug two trenches about 1foot deep and 3 feet aside , piling the excess soil along the edges of the trench . I commit the seed potatoes directly in the base of the deep every 12 inches and spread over them with several inches of soil .
After the potatoes plants emerged and grew to about 10 inch , I lend a couple more inch of earth into the base of the trench and continued this cognitive operation as require until the course were finally mounded .
Potato Care
Water spud plants the regularly during the affectionate months , but be careful not to overwater ( which can rot the tubers ) or water irregularly ( which can lead to low or misshapen potatoes ) .
The hilling method acting worked particularly well in my sandy , well - drained stain , but for gardeners with less favorable stain conditions ( i.e. rocky or clay soils ) you should consider above - ground growing methods , such as raised bed or Solanum tuberosum sow in in straw - mulch mound . No matter your garden size of it , grunge condition or location , there can be a successful potato harvest in your future .
understand more of Garden In Front »
