For many gardeners Good Friday is thee day to plant potatoes. For this gardener, it’s when I get to it – and usually not that early in the year.
As long as your potatoes are planted by June, you should get a full crop. Potato plants produce a certain number of tubers, and then die back. When the plant is dead, that’s it. Unlike tomatoes or peppers that continue to pump out fruit all season, potatoes will not.
So, I ask, why plant them too early and risk hard frost, and stress and strain on the potato plants when you will get no more than someone who plants later? As usual this time of year, I have a bag of grocery store potatoes just beginning to develop sprouts — in a month they will be perfect and ready to plant.
If you have potatoes pushing out sprouts, they are good to plant and should be true to type. Some potatoes are treated so they don’t sprout and last longer in storage until the consumer gets them. Seed potatoes are not really seeds of the potato plant, although potato plants sometimes develop them.
Potatoes for planting are just commonly referred to as seed potatoes. When planting, potatoes are cut into pieces that are about egg size with at least one eye which is your potential sprout. Plant with the eye pointing up.
Small potatoes can be planted whole. I plant them in a very shallow hole and pull the warmer surrounding soil over the top. The deeper you dig the colder the soil, the longer it takes them to get going.
As you cultivate over the season, continue to pull more soil over the mound. Last season, my potato plants had died back mid-August … See, no need to hurry!
In general, a crop of potatoes will need 70-90 days in the soil to produce. No need to hurry to dig them out, but you might want to mark where they were as the dead plant withers away to nothing. Leaving them in the soil until you need them is the best storage spot for them.
We seem to have better than usual weather and digging fingers can be getting itchy. However, for those of you that are new to vegetable gardening, the middle of May is normally when it’s safe to plant out your warm season transplants like tomatoes, peppers and vine crops. Nighttime temps must be consistently above 50 degrees for your plants to be successful (this is a recording).
Farmers’ market
The Mankato Farmers’ Market vendors are already gearing up for this year’s outdoor markets. We have added 15-plus new vendors this year — we are full!
One of the longtime produce vendors at the market is Tim Guldan of Guldan Family Farms of New Ulm. Just when I thought I was getting busy, I asked what he had planted so far and here is the list: 1,300 kohlrabi, 750 cabbage, 300 cauliflower, 1,000 broccoli, 1,000 head lettuce, 2,750 peppers, 2,000 leeks, 2,000 shallots, 300 bok choy, 600 celery, 250 kale, 200 eggplant and 600 celeriac.
Whew! And that is just the first round of seeds trays in the greenhouse!
A produce grower needs a wealth of working plant knowledge when growing a diverse group of plants. Each plant type has its own soil and water needs and most all of them need full sun.
Some veggies like lettuce will enjoy a little midday shade. Dealing with insect and disease issues of each plant type becomes second nature to an experienced grower. IPM — aka integrated pest management — needs to be part of the working plan.
Recognizing insect or disease issues at the onset is critical in management to save a crop. Overlooking a hatching of CPB — aka Colorado Potato Beetles — can chew down your plants in a hurry, laying eggs of the next generation in between bites.
Large scale growing in fields has many four-legged enemy pests as well, rabbits, deer and racoon are more than happy to stop by for a snack. IPM will begin in my garden today as I notice many green things poking through the soil already.
A pump sprayer of smelly “deer scare” product awaits. The smell is bad but it dissipates to our noses in a day and stays on the plants for about two weeks. Instead of just spraying a perimeter, I also directly spray foliage and flower stalks of frequently chewed plants like Asiatic lilies and other bulbs. Either it has worked or the deer had moved on, regardless it’s a win.
The outdoor markets will start again May 1 at the Best Buy parking lot 8 a.m. — noon. See you there!
March 31, 2021 at 07:00PM
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Gardening column: One potato, two potato, three potato, four! - Mankato Free Press
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