Last of the Red Potatoes

These are some pretty sorry looking potatoes!  It's the last of the 30 pounds we harvested at the end of the season from four pounds of seed potatoes (after several meals of baby reds throughout the summer).  They did get a little scabby this year, so I'll be moving the potatoes to a different area in the garden this spring.

In addition to these red potatoes, we planted Norkotah russet potatoes (looks like one of which snuck into this box) and Kennebec white potatoes.  We harvested about fifty pounds of each, also from roughly 4 pounds of seed.  From what I've been able to find online, that sounds like a good harvest.  It seems to be just about the right amount for my family of five to get us through the winter.

Potatoes Harvested

We dug the potatoes yesterday.  Rita said that they need to be dug before frost otherwise they'll get sugary, and frost was forecast for last night - and indeed we did get frost!  So our timing was just perfect.  We have eaten most of the reds already with probably one or two meals left.  We yielded 95 pounds of Norkota (russets) and Kennebec!

I plan to freeze some of the russets as french fries.  I found this info online somewhere and the kids LOVED them, so I plan to do more.  Here's what I did:

Peeled potatoes and cut into french fries.
Boil potatoes in salt water until just about done.
Dry thoroughly and freeze on cookie sheets.  Transfer to freezer bags.
To bake:  toss fries with one to two tablespoons of oil and bake on a cookie sheet for 25 minutes at 425.

Yum!

End of Summer

How SAD - I think I might actually like fall if it didn't mean two things:  1) Back to work which means a lot less free time for the gardens and 2) WINTER is an inevitability.  Yuck, I just hate saying that word - winter.  I really should live in a different state but I wonder if tolerating this winter is part of what makes the summer so sweet.

The cucumbers have slowed considerably thanks to the cold weather we've had the past few days.  It's gotten down to the upper 30's at night, which makes me nervous as I have a garden full of green Romas still!  Twenty-two quarts of pickles - AND a bag of cucs donated to a good friend - all, in all, the cucumbers were a success!

Now on to tomatoes - I picked three boxes of romas that were "almost" ready so I could monitor them more closely in my window sill now that I'm headed back to work.  I have big plans for spaghetti sauce, salsa, and just plain tomato sauce and hope that the weather cooperates!

We've been eating potatoes for at least 6 weeks now.  I've harvested half of the reds, and just a few of the Norkota plants.  I found a website that gave advice for freezing potatoes, so I thought I'd give french fries a shot.  I peeled, sliced into "fries" and boiled the potatoes before freezing them on a pan and then transferring to freezer bags.  The site said that when ready to cook, toss the frozen fries in a couple of tablespoons of vegetable oil and bake at 425 degrees for about 20 minutes.  Hopefully that works!

When Joey (my four year old) saw me taking the pans of fries out of the freezer, he said "Where did you get those?"  I told them they were from the garden.  He said "WHAT?!  Rita grows french fries in her garden?  That's silly!"

Baby Red Potatoes

We had our first harvest of baby red potatoes on July 7.  YUM!  I was surprised that we actually had some potatoes the size of oranges!  Now if I could get my weeds controlled I'd really feel like a successful gardener!

Potatoes Fertilized

After much internet research, I came up with a plan to fertilize the potatoes.  I followed the advice of one website and worked 1 Tbsp of 10-10-10 into the soil six inches from the stem of each plant yesterday (7-6-10).  Thankfully it also rained profusely last night so I didn't have to worry about watering to distribute the fertilizer.  The site I found recommended applying the fertilizer 6 weeks after planting, which was just about right (ok, a little late, but it was a busy week last week!).  I went back to the garden to weed today and didn't notice any dead or over-fertilized foliage, so that's a good sign!

Potatoes

Rita called on Wednesday to tell us that we had potatoes sprouting out of the ground. Yay!

Today I picked up broccoli, tomatoes, celery, sage, green onions, and some impatiens from the greenhouse. Memorial Day weekend! Yay, summer!!

Stomp, plop, pull, POTATO!

What a gorgeous weekend! We got black dirt spread in the vegetable garden and tilled it in on Sunday before planting three rows of potatoes (about 5 lbs per row). We had quite an assembly line going there. Rita had a potato planter tool and we had all three kids helping us. I'd "stomp" the planter in the ground, Emma or Joey would "plop" a potato in it, Ben would "pull" the lever and when the potato was deposited he'd yell "POTATO!" Hence the mantra "Stomp, plop, pull, POTATO!"

Next I have to get those onions in the ground, and I'd like to plant peas and carrots within the next couple of days as well. Prior to this beautiful weekend we had at least a full week of wet, cold weather, so it feels like I'm a little behind given that we've had an early spring. But it is still just mid-May in northern Minnesota, so I guess we're probably right on schedule.