Garden-Fresh Potatoes Galore

Last spring, when this virus was first unfolding in the US, I made plans to plant an entire bed of potatoes in my vegetable garden. The bed I chose was one of the strawberry beds, an 8 X 4 bed. I transplanted all of the strawberry plants out of that bed and into the other beds to clear a spot. 

In the fall of 2019, I made the decision to not grow potatoes any more -- they're a lot of work to dig. So, we decided to eat all of the potatoes that I dug that fall and not save any for replanting. When spring rolled around and I changed my mind about the potatoes, I thought I was out of luck with the seed potatoes. Yet, to my delight, while cleaning out the garage in late March I came across a bucket of our potatoes that hadn't been touched. It wasn't a lot, maybe 2  pounds of potatoes. Next, I dug through the old potato bed in the garden and found a few stragglers that I had missed in the fall. Then I added 2 russet potatoes from my pantry that were sprouting. All totaled, I had about 4 or 5 pounds of potatoes to plant in the prepared, former strawberry bed.

With each mowing this summer, we mulched the potato bed with grass clippings. I'm not sure I'd recommend grass clippings as a sole mulch for potatoes, as they tend to mat with time. But they did do their job of holding in moisture and providing a dark place for potatoes to grow under the mat. In future years, I might add layers of shredded paper to the grass clippings.

The Harvest

First off, remember those 2 russet potatoes from my kitchen that I planted? Do you want to know how much I harvested from those? Well, I planted 2 russet potatoes, and I harvested -- drumroll please, wait for it -- 2 russet potatoes (wah wah). Yep, my russet potatoes only produced a single russet potato each. Fortunately, I did not put all of my potatoes into 1 egg basket (I know, mixed metaphors there). Instead, in addition to those russets, I planted  seed potatoes from our own potato stock that I knew from experience would be productive, purple fingerling potatoes. And were they ever productive. I harvested about 42 pounds of potatoes. And to make things even better, I only damaged 3 potatoes in the digging. (I can still use those damaged potatoes, just need to do so right away -- next week or so.)

I've always thought that growing potatoes is a great way to rejuvenate garden beds. I say this for 5 reasons: 1) I work the soil before adding the potatoes, digging deeper than I might if just planting lettuce or tomatoes; 2) I mulch potato beds heavily throughout the growing season, which not only helps hold in moisture but also blocks out weeds. I only found 1 single weed in the bed when harvesting; 3) that mulch, whatever I choose, gets worked into the soil when I harvest, enriching and aerating poor or depleted garden soil; 4) potatoes are harvested at the end of the growing season, meaning I leave a bed clean and weed-free for planting new vegetables in late winter or early spring (in this case, I'll move strawberry plants back into that bed in late fall); and 5) my rejuvenating work rewards me with lots of delicious, garden-fresh potatoes.

My back and shoulders are rather sore from yesterday's marathon potato-digging, but my mind is at ease, knowing we have enough fresh potatoes to last several months.