I've been wanting to get the potatoes planted, and today turned out to be a good day to get started on that project. I like to grow a lot of my potatoes at the community garden because the soil there has more sand in it and is looser than my garden at home. Potatoes grow better in loose soil because they can expand easier.
I had previously written about using the rototiller to prepare my community garden plots for planting, so the plots are ready for the potatoes, or whatever else I decide to plant in them.
This is the plot that I started with today.
The first thing I had to do was to decide how far apart I wanted the rows to be, and then measure them out and mark them. Once that was done, I dug a shallow trench for 2 rows to put the seed potatoes into for planting.
After that, I placed a piece of seed potato in the trench about a foot apart. Each piece of seed potato has to have an active eye, or you won't get a plant from that piece.
Once all the seed potato chunks are all placed in the trenches, the trenches are filled in.
the first 2 rows used about half of the pieces of seed potato that I had, so I had enough for 2 more rows. these are all Kennebec Red potatoes.
2 more trenches were dug.
The potato pieces were placed in the trenches.
By the time I finished the planting for the day, I had planted 4 rows of the Kennebec Red potatoes, and 2 rows of Yukon Gold potatoes. There's enough space left in this plot for 1 more row of potatoes, and that will be more Yukon Golds.
Once I get this plot finished, I still have another plot to plant with potatoes. I will probably have some left over Yukon Gold seed potatoes, and I also have to plant Russets and a few rows of Adirondack Blue potatoes. The blue potatoes turned out to be the best storage potatoes for me over the winter. I still have at least 5 pounds of last year's crop that are all still in good condition to be eaten. I don't know if I'll get any planting done tomorrow because it might rain, but it also might not. The weather forecast is calling for a 50% chance of rain, so it might go around us. I guess I'll know tomorrow...
That's it for this post, thanks for stopping by to check it out!
