Potatoes Are Up!!

I noticed the other day that the potato bed had little stems poking up through the soil. Today I went to examine how they were doing.

New Potato Plant

It has been raining so much that I haven't had to water the bed, so I really haven't paid any attention to it. Not only did it have potato plants but also a lot of weeds.

Potato Bed In Need Of Being Weeded

It's always so much fun to see the potatoes popping up because according to all the gardening books, I plant potatoes wrong. Lol. According to the experts, when you plant potatoes you are supposed to dig a trench and cover the seed potatoes a little at a time until you have covered a mound over them. I honestly don't have time to babysit potatoes. I need to be able to plant them deep and forget about them. (See post and video here) Amazingly enough, you actually can dig a deep hole, pop in a cut potato with at least one or two eyes, cover it up, and it will grow. The last time I planted potatoes this way, in a 6' by 4' bed, we harvested five 5 gallon buckets. I can't wait to see what we are blessed with this year.

Potatoes In The Raised Bed Kitchen Garden

I took a garden rake and upset the soil in the bed. That did a job on most of the short rooted weeds and didn't bother the stout potato shoots at all.

Potato Plants In The Raised Bed Kitchen Garden

Not bad for a few minutes work in the garden. I can't wait until all the little shoots are up and we have a mass of large green potato leaves in this bed. Then our only worries will be from potato bugs, burrowing mice, and deer who like to eat potato plants down to the ground. These are the main reasons that we put up bird netting around this bed.

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