My husband and I dug potatoes today. 20 lbs - a good haul. Mostly Burbank Russets. A few Green Mountains and Adirondack Reds.
I start digging potatoes, as we need them, a couple weeks after they flower (mid July). I plant the early Reds, Fingerlings, and Butterballs at the front of the bed. I start digging here and then gradually move to the back of the bed to where I planted the keeper potatoes, the Russets and Green Mountains.
My Russet tubers are small - as usual. I plant them close together (about 9 inches). With a small space, I like to squeeze in as much as I can. If I spaced the seed potatoes more, I'd have bigger potatoes, but I'm not sure if the total yield (weight) would be more. I figure that this year I got 40 lbs of potatoes from 35 square feet (a 10 x 3.5 foot bed, with six 3.5 ft rows).
I've found that small baked potatoes are really nice. Perfect for a single serving. They bake up fluffy inside and crisp skin outside. Ahhh....
I just posted our beginning of potato harvest with a blue tub trug!
ReplyDeleteThat is so funny. The same blue trug!!
ReplyDeleteI envy your nice Blue potatoes. I didn't grow any Blues this year because each mail order variety costs so much. But I recently found a local garden center where they sell smaller amounts of great varieties of seed potatoes. I look forward trying this next year.
The potatoes look nice! What variety of Russet did you plant?
ReplyDeleteI planted some Buttes this year but I haven't gotten much since I planted them really late and the plants were really under-developed.
They are Burbank Russets, the most common Russet. Even McDonalds uses these.
ReplyDelete