On the last weekend in April we planted 2.5 pounds of German Butterballs in some recycled kiddie pools and a few ounces of red potatoes (that were sprouting in the pantry) in a big bucket.
After many months of waiting, drought, hail storms and lots of patience, the time finally came to harvest them!!! This weekend, with the help of Beastie and her mom, we harvested all of our potatoes! We talked about how many potatoes we thought we’d find and I set a goal of harvesting 50 pounds.
The scavenger hunt through all the soil and straw was fun, and a little tiring as we searched for potatoes and moved dirt from the pool into other containers so as to save it for next year.
So, what did we get? Not a whole lot. Tool Lady and I are pretty disappointed in our 8 pounds, 1 ounce of German Butterballs and 2 pounds, 10 ounces of red potatoes. Oh well, what can you do, right? You plant your seeds, give them sunshine, water and love and you hope for the best!
So, in total we got a little over 10 pounds of potatoes, which is more than we had. And I think we learned a little something, too. Our best guess is that the soil we used was just too good…jam packed full of nutrients, and very dense. We knew this going in and thought that if we layered our growing potatoes with soil and straw as they grew up in order to “hill them up”, it would be enough. Now, where do you think we found the most potatoes? That’s right, where the straw was. Not in the yummy soil, but in the space creating straw.
Next year, we’ll adapt. We’ll try again with even less soil and more straw and we’ll hope for a bigger harvest. In the meantime, we’ll enjoy a few home cooked meals with our home grown potatoes.
Hmmm…this is entirely possible. We had a pretty hot (and super dry) year. Our potatoes were positioned though so as to not be in the baking sun. I’ll definitely keep this in mind when we’re looking for next years potato spot! It’s such a balance! Thanks for the dialogue!
I’m wondering if it wasn’t so much the growing medium but that the straw acted as an insulator keeping the plants cooler. I don’t know what your climates like but is it possible it got too hot for them? I know that they dont set many if any tubers when the weather gets really hot and I’m wondering if the bare soil was more likely to heat up than the straw. Just a theory….As you can see I’m suffering a new found obsession with potato growing…..
Jody – Thanks for the words of encouragement! I had a big goal, so i was a bit disappointed, but when you put it the way you have, I guess we did pretty well, ha? It’s all a learning curve, that’s for sure!
Liz – Very interesting! We came to our conclusion about using more straw because last year we only used soil and nothing grew…literally. The year, the only potatoes that grew were where the straw was. The bottom layer was solely soil and there were no potatoes there at all! Crazy!
Thats really interesting, my father came to almost the diametically opposed view last year with his potatoes – he was disappointed with his crop and decided he didn’t feed them enough….All those little ones you did get look delicious though!
You did much better than us this year. It sounds like you harvested about 4 or 5x what you planted. We barely got over half what we planted. Your success encourages us to plant eagerly again next year. We’ll remember your thoughts about the straw.