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Post by Gianna on Nov 12, 2018 18:16:47 GMT -5
I got flowers! I knew buds were forming, but these are in bloom. Yukon gold types. I had been digging around a wee bit in the soil, and have found a few small taters in the 4 pots I tried - at least an inch or so across. one pot even had 2 baby ones. I'm going to (try to) save them for Thanksgiving however, or I'd cook them tonight.
The plants themselves are looking wonderful - nice and lush and healthy.
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Post by Gianna on Dec 1, 2018 14:11:59 GMT -5
Thanksgiving morning (Nov 22) I harvest 4 of my first planted pots of Yukon golds. These each had one seed potato per pot, and had been in soil for 55 days. I was amazed by how many taters there were at such a young age. I was so distracted by the lovely spuds, I didn't think to weigh them. Maybe a couple pounds, but who knows? I was mainly relieved there were enough for TG dinner a few hours later. So I scrubbed them up, cut them into pieces (many were 3 inches, with others smaller) and roasted them in butter/olive oil till well browned. They held together well, and were deliciously soft. They did not seem starchy at all. Well worth growing in pots!!! Today I dug up some sort of red fingerling that was showing signs of flowering. It obviously needed more time since there were so many tiny ones showing. I carefully harvested almost 5 oz by weight, then replanted the root ball into the pot, watered it, and put it in the shade. I've seen videos of that, as well as done it with a couple of the early Yukon golds, and it seems to work well. If all goes well, there should be a nice harvest of little red potatoes for Christmas. Not all of my gardening experiments work out well, but this one is.
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Post by brownrexx on Dec 1, 2018 14:49:26 GMT -5
How exciting. I love roasted little potatoes, especially the Yukon golds and the red skinned ones. congratulations.
Do you really need to disturb the root ball? When I want early potatoes I just dig around with my hands and remove a few without uprooting the plant but maybe you don't have enough space in the pot to do it this way.
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Post by Gianna on Dec 2, 2018 15:41:59 GMT -5
(Opps about the quote. ?? I'm replying to BR's second paragraph above. )
Into the future I don't think I'll need to disturb the root ball as much. But now, especially since I wanted to harvest early for TG, and now for Christmas, I almost have to. Since the first ones were organic 'grocery store' potatoes, I have no idea of they are 'earlies' (65 days) or 'main crops' (110 days). Yukon golds I think are supposed to be 80 days, but frankly it's impossible to know if what you get from the store are what the store label says - the actual bags just say 'gold potatoes', or something equally ambiguous. I've planted at least 3 different tupes of 'gold potatoes'.
The fingerlings I dug around the other day were definitely not 'earlies'. Or at least that was my conclusion. But I'm wondering if the shortening days are affecting maturation. I"m thinking after Dec 21 when days start getting long again, when the new potatoes are ready will be more predictable based on how old the plants are.
As for digging around in the pots to find those little orbs of gold, the pots I am using don't easily allow that without doing even more damage. Just too narrow. I also don't mind turning them out since I seem to have quite a few pots planted - certainly more than we'll ever use. And it's fun. The plants don't seem to mind that much either. They seem to recover in a day or so if watered and placed in the shade.
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Post by paquebot on Dec 3, 2018 22:11:50 GMT -5
A disturbed root ball will not make more potatoes. The tubers are only formed on the end of stolons. They are limited in number and will usually not make more if broken off. If there are some which had not yet grown beyond the root system, they may form tubers yet. But, do not be surprised to find nothing from the transplanted root balls.
Martin
The truth is more important than the facts.
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Post by Gianna on Dec 5, 2018 19:24:42 GMT -5
I certainly would not try to transplant a potato plant growing in the ground. But for the ones growing in pots, when you tip it out, all the roots come with it relatively undisturbed. And you only disturb them where you want to... and not too much. The last pot I tipped out had great numbers of immature stolons with tiny, tiny potatoes on the ends. But also a few larger ones that got harvested and eaten. Then the plant was put back in the pot, with the immature stolons not disturbed too much. The plants may not make new stolons, but if some of the existing ones mature further, that would be good enough. The couple plants I've tipped out, replanted, and tipped out again have given nice amounts of potatoes. Who knows how many they might have given if I hadn't messed with them If I were growing potatoes to get a large harvest, or we depended on homegrown for our food source, I wouldn't be growing or playing around with them like this. But I'm only trying to get several batches of new potatoes. If I mess them up, not a big loss.
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Post by brownrexx on Dec 6, 2018 8:29:37 GMT -5
That's a fun project for you and especially since you can garden year round. We can't keep crops growing long term like you can. It would be fun to see the potatoes growing and maturing. I have never really done that. I just plant, pick a few new potatoes after flowering and then harvest when mature.
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Post by Gianna on Jan 10, 2019 22:20:02 GMT -5
That's a fun project for you and especially since you can garden year round. We can't keep crops growing long term like you can. It would be fun to see the potatoes growing and maturing. I have never really done that. I just plant, pick a few new potatoes after flowering and then harvest when mature. This definitely has been a fun project. And it's been successful, unlike some of my other projects, lol. I harvested a lot of taters for the holidays. I took them to both potlucks, and served them here at home. I thought they were especially tasty, and looked very pretty. There were reds, whites/yellows, and purples. Most were small round ones which is what I wanted, but there were also fingerlings, which I won't grow again. They were too irregular shaped to make cleaning easy. And I wont grow many purple ones either (though I do have some purple seed potatoes which I will plant.) The purple ones, while pretty, are just too dark to know if they are clean. What I want going forward are nice, smooth, white/yellow or red potatoes.
I still have about a dozen pots unharvested, and yesterday I just planted another dozen or so of newly sprouted ones. There are also more chitted and waiting. And some more purchased seed potatoes in the fridge. Our mild 'winter' did not seem to slow them down at all.
All this, and I'm still eating low carb - a cruel joke when growing spuds. But the fun is in the planting and harvesting and giving away.
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Post by bestofour on May 3, 2019 14:32:30 GMT -5
wondering how this project turned out.
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barefoot
Junior Member
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Post by barefoot on May 4, 2019 14:35:10 GMT -5
A couple of years ago around the holidays when they had 10 lb bags of potatoes for .99 we bought a few bags. One of those bags got pushed to the darks of the pantry and when I found it we ended up have to cut the bag off from all around the sprouts. Waste not want not, right? So we cut the taters up and let the dry a bit and planted them alternating layers of dirt and hay in wire cylinderical towers my son made. Everyone has always said spuds don't grow well here, so I've never messed with them before. Our first potato crop did so well last year, I bought 3 bags of holiday sale potatoes this past November specifically to grow this spring. They are doing beautifully.
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Post by Gianna on Jun 13, 2019 21:12:14 GMT -5
wondering how this project turned out. Sorry for the delay in replying. The project turned out very well. As I got new spuds from the store, plus a few official seed potatoes, I kept planting in 5 gallon containers in rich mix (lots of organic matter plus fertilizer). In fact, I just harvested 6 more pots yesterday and gave them to the neighbors - who rave about them. They are clean, mostly unblemished and firm. The neighbor across the way just said today he's never had potatoes so fresh and firm. As I have harvested over the months, I'd keep the potatoes that were about the size of an egg, and some of these are ready to go back into pots now. I doubt I will ever buy official seed potatoes again. The 'organic' spuds from the grocery worked just as well and were less expensive. I also was not thrilled with the quality of the seed potatoes I had ordered. When you buy organic from the store, you don't get culls as I did from online ordering. But, again, I'm growing these potatoes for the sheer fun of it and am not depending on a crop to either sell or fend off starvation. I did find it was easier to grow them over the winter here. No frosts, and with the good rain we had this past winter, the plants more or less took care of themselves till they were ready to tip out. In the summer, though they were faster growing, I've had to water frequently, which sometimes I was a bit lax... because of that, I didnt get as many tubers with the summer spuds. I expect to put in a few more soon however cuz it's just so much fun. I do reuse my mix, and I've noticed a couple potato plants coming up with other planted things. So it goes.
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Post by brownrexx on Jun 14, 2019 8:42:06 GMT -5
Gianna, do Colorado Potato Beetles live in CA?
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Post by Gianna on Jun 14, 2019 9:23:40 GMT -5
Gianna , do Colorado Potato Beetles live in CA? Not that I know. If they are in Cali, this is not a potato growing area (avos and lemons) and, sadly, there just arent many veggie gardeners nearby growing taters to attract potato beetles. It would be a lucky beetle to find mine. Snails however... but they move slow and only eat the leaves.
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Post by daylilydude on May 2, 2020 18:37:59 GMT -5
Well ima gonna give this a try in 5 gallon buckets...
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Post by brownrexx on May 2, 2020 19:40:40 GMT -5
I would have only planted one per bucket.
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Post by spike on May 2, 2020 19:44:37 GMT -5
I would have only planted one per bucket.
I agree with Brown. I normally use big tubs and put maybe 3 in them (depending on the size of the eyes). Hopefully it works for you!
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Post by daylilydude on May 2, 2020 19:46:33 GMT -5
I would have only planted one per bucket. LOL... brownrexx, spike , I was just watching some videos on planting in buckets, so i'm gonna change that in the morning to 1 per bucket.
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Post by brownrexx on May 2, 2020 19:49:32 GMT -5
You will get better production and bigger potatoes if they are not crowded.
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Post by daylilydude on May 3, 2020 8:54:22 GMT -5
Now that I have went from 2 buckets to 6 my next question is what is a good way of storing them?
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Post by brownrexx on May 3, 2020 13:30:16 GMT -5
Storing what? The potatoes after harvest?
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Post by paquebot on May 3, 2020 15:00:16 GMT -5
Six buckets of potatoes will yield about enough for 12 meals for two. There will be no need for storage.
Martin
The truth is more important than the facts.
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Post by Deleted on May 4, 2020 7:29:33 GMT -5
LOL, Martin; Nothing like putting it in perspective---I think I will wait and plant Fall potatoes in the back garden. OR,perhaps one bucket just to see what happens. I need some husky grands to come hill and dig---or more machinery.
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Post by brownrexx on May 4, 2020 7:43:04 GMT -5
I have never grown potatoes in containers but I think that you will get potatoes, just not as many as if the plants were growing in-ground with more room to spread out. Potatoes form on the stems, not the roots so they do not develop deep in the soil. This is why people "hill" their potatoes as they grow. It keeps the developing tubers covered and protected from light which will turn them green.
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Post by paquebot on May 4, 2020 8:55:29 GMT -5
Those are bakers. Big tubers need a lot of room to grow. You never see them grown in containers, always round tubers.
Martin
The truth is more important than the facts.
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