Finally, The Potatoes Are Planted!

Finally, the ground dried up enough to plant the potatoes. Unfortunately, it was only about 45 Degrees outside. There is something wrong with planting the garden and wearing a coat at the same time! It has rained for a week and is suppose to rain again for the next few days, so if the potatoes were to get planted at all , we needed to don the coats and get on with it. The old-timers always said potatoes were to have been planted by St. Patrick's Day and today is March 29th so we are already behind schedule!

The kid's Poppy  had plowed the ground a couple weeks ago before the big rains so he now attached a harrow to the back of the four-wheeler and ran it over the ground to break up the sod. Then he ran the tiller over that to loosen up the dirt even more. Now we were ready for the fun part, the manual labor.

We had picked up some red and white potatoes from the store, but I wanted more variety than that, so I went to our local greenhouse and they had five different kinds. I remembered we cut the potatoes up with eyes left on each piece, but I did not know how many potatoes I would need so I figured 5 lbs of each one sounded good. We planted Red Pontiac, Yukon Gold, Norland, Kennebec, and Cobblers and ended up with five pretty long rows. My "roll her eyes around" daughter thought I was just kidding when I told her we would be filling up the root cellar with potatoes! My son's dog couldn't figure out why we were planting something that looked like it was meant to be played with in the ground. He was so confused!


I couldn't remember how far apart to plant the potatoes so I just winged it. Some of them were spaced about 20 inches apart and some looked like they had been sowed, so we will just have to see how things turn out. I am finding that I don't stoop and bend as well as I use to . Poppy  says he will have to design a fork to attach to the tractor before time to dig all those potatoes. He is good at that sort of thing and I am counting on it!!!