Planting potatoes
Saturday, May 15 - 65 degrees, light west wind
I’ve been a little slack on keeping the blog up to date…so I’m taking Father’s Day and catching up a bit. We’ve really had a fantastic crew of people this year for our CSA - nearly ten families, and several dedicated individuals, have really made it a good year for us.
Going back about a month, this is what the garden looks like in mid-May - a sea of grass, waiting to take shape. Today is potato planting day. On hand - Tony, Tim, and Amy.
Planting potatoes is pretty easy; once you’ve got the potato trenches dug. For the last several years, we’ve done spot rototilling as in the pictures above. Spot rotolling means that you need to either mow between the rows during the summer, or mulch with newspaper and straw - but we find that doing this keeps retain water in the soil during the dry season, and in addition, it looks nicer and is more pleasant to sit in while weeding the actual rows.
So -dig a row, cut the potatoes in half and lay them in the row, then turn in some alpaca compost (above), which is full of worms and all the good stuff gardens need.
Look at the color of those potatoes! They are Adirondack Reds…they make amazing mashed potatoes in the fall, and we have enough to throw them in the frig and keep them through mid-February.
