Potato Harvest 2020

This past weekend we harvested our red potatoes. We planted our potato crop in early March. We normally plant them in late February, but the weather was terribly rainy and the ground was just too wet. If we had planted when the soil was too wet it would have tore up our garden and made it difficult for the potato plants to grow. Thankfully, even though we planted them later than usual, the harvest was still plentiful.

We planted our potatoes before the onset of these crazy times we find ourselves under now. If we had known then what we know now, we would have planted double what we did. But, we were donated our potato slips this year which means our harvest of potatoes was nearly free ~ praise be to God! Next year will be different and we will plan accordingly. 

We had planned to get down to the potato patch early in the morning to take up the potatoes, but my father-in-law surprised us and had pulled them all up before we could even get out there! Potatoes are ready to be picked when the leaves start to turn brown. We also must keep an eye out for ants, because they like to attack our potatoes before they're are fully ripe. When harvesting potatoes all you have to do is pull the green part straight up out of the ground and with it will come most if not all of the potatoes attached to that plant. 

Once we've pulled up all the potatoes and sort the greens from the actual potatoes, we run the plow through where the potatoes were planted to try to turn the soil. We do this, because sometimes there can be potatoes that didn't come up with the leafy part of the potato plant. The children's job is to walk behind the plow pushing the dirt mound back into the plow hole searching for potatoes. 

Once the potatoes are all accounted for, we take the green parts of the potato plants to the compost pile and then set the potatoes on a tarp to dry out for the remainder of the day. You don't want to leave the potatoes out over night because the dew will ruin them. Before nightfall, we collect the potatoes into buckets and bring them inside the house. Unfortunately, we do not have a cellar, so we have to process our potatoes fairly quickly. We set aside a nice size grocery store sack full of potatoes to eat fresh and then the remainder are canned. It's important to can the potatoes as quick as possible, because untreated, organically grown potatoes have a tendency to go soft fairly quickly.

We harvested about 20 gallons of potatoes this year, which was a mighty fine harvest if you ask me. I'll be sharing soon how we can our potatoes; but for now you can check out this post for an alternate way we've found to store our potatoes without processing them. This method will allow the potatoes to last a couple of months, which gives you the opportunity to enjoy farm fresh potatoes a tad bit longer even when you don't have a root cellar.

Under our family's current circumstances I've never been so glad to be able to grow our own food. There have been times over the years when I've resented the fact that we 'had' to grow our own food to make ends meet. But, now I find myself undeniably overwhelmed with gratitude that we know how to put food on the table without being dependent on going to the grocery store. While it is convenient to run to the local super market to buy food, it's a relief to know we don't have to if we didn't want to or couldn't. 

I'm a firm believer that everyone should at least have a kitchen garden. If the only planting space you have available is a patio, I can assure you there is plenty of produce that can be grown in pots and other forms of planters. There is no better time than now to learn the art of growing your own food. None of us have to be dependent on the grocery stores. We need to unite as a global community, encouraging, supporting, and sharing resources to help restore the food industry of the world. Our bodies need and deserve natural, unadulterated food grown by the hands of those who care. I have no doubt in my mind that we can pursue these endeavors with great success if only we commit to do it with out whole hearts and as if our lives depend upon, because truthfully dear friends, it does.

With Love & Hope,

Jennife

Growing Potatoes From Start to Finish

Despite living in the south which is riddled with heat, humidity and lovely bugs, I'm determined to grow our own potatoes!! Another factor which complicates us growing potatoes is that we do not have a root cellar, basement, or crawl space; which makes storing potatoes long term nearly impossible. And as some folks do in the northern states, leaving the potatoes in the ground until we want to eat them is just not a method that would work for us: first because we need the space to plant other crops and second because the bugs would devour them before we could eat them all. We've tried many different methods for storing them over the years, but you'll have to keep reading to find out what we did with our crop of potatoes this year!

Growing potatoes really isn't that hard it just takes a long time for them to grow. We start with freshly tilled soil (with fertilizer tilled in if you're using) and a bag of seed potatoes. The kids and I took the seed potatoes and cut them into sections, cutting off parts so that each cut had an 'eye' (which is the part that leads to a potato plant). Then we dug a long trench, dropping potato chunks into the trench spacing them about a foot apart. After that you cover the trench back with dirt. As the potatoes grow you continue to cover them with dirt. Potatoes love light airy soil.

Once you start to notice the plants turning brown (dying) it's time to harvest your crop of potatoes. You want to be careful digging up your potatoes, because they're basically long vines under ground and it's easy to chop one in half or at the very least cut a potato you didn't want to cut. We lay our potatoes out on a tarp to dry out a little. Any green, mushy, or potatoes with evidence of bug bites we throw out.

This year we decided to further dry out the potatoes by setting them on tables lined with newspaper in our schoolroom. I'm not sure we'll do this method in the future as it did seem that we lost a good many to rot, but I'm not sure if we wouldn't have lost them anyways. After letting them dry out for 2 weeks; turning them after one week, we wrapped the remaining good potatoes individually in newspaper and stored them in an under-the-bed tote without the lid. We stacked the potatoes two layers high, and stored them under our bed. This is the first year we've done this so I'll keep you posted on how long they last.

Since potatoes cost a good bit when bought at our local grocery I don't purchase them all too often. So when our potato harvest comes in we typically eat them up fairly quickly. I wish there was a way we could grow a years worth and store them to last nearly as long, but that just isn't in the cards right now.

Oh I should add that any potatoes smaller than a baseball we canned to add to soups, stews, and to make mashed potatoes. Canning potatoes isn't hard it's just labor intensive! Thankfully, though our whole crew gets their hands into the mix to get the job done, and as they say "many hands make light work". I didn't get any pictures from when we canned our potato harvest, which is totally not like me, but I must have been seriously in the zone, lol!

While our potato preserving system may not be ideal, it works for us and we get to enjoy farm fresh potatoes grown by our hands! Trust me it's well worth all the extra work!!

With Love & Hope,
Jennifer