Potatoes!!!

So Last year we thought we would see if we could grow through the winter in our raised beds... we covered them with 2 layers of plastic on arched black pvc... that was a disaster... we get entirely too much snow and it collapsed the covers... so we were really anxious to see if our seed potatoes made it through the winter! In March (15th) when some things were mostly thawed, we got rid of the arched things and put up the regular support system for the plants and then covered it with one layer of plastic... this worked really well on the straight beds... the beds that kind of jig-jag do not stay covered well at all!!! the wind blows too hard here!! So we waited to see if anything would come up... On April 22 i saw shoots coming up in this small straight bed!!! I was actually with a customer and could not help but shout for joy!!! I was soooo excited!!! so we have been watching them carefully since and photographing their progress! Finally yesterday i got up the nerve to dig in a little and find a few new potatoes and we tried them for lunch! They were awesome and i can hardly wait to harvest them all!!!! I dug up some German Butterballs and some La Ratte Fingerlings.

We also have planted:
Yukon Gold
Red Norland
Purple Peruvian (new this year)
Colorado Rose (new this year)
Nicola (new this year)
Yellow Finn
Russian Banana Fingerlings

We haven't tasted the new ones that we are growing this year, but the descriptions sounded good so we are trying them!!

We bought all of our seed potatoes from Peaceful Valley Farm (groworganic.com) you can buy organically grown or conventional. I also buy garlic form them. Just a really good company!

One major problem we are having is potato bugs... they are nasty! and there seem to be thousands of them!! Jerry and Alex go around smashing them between two sticks or something... i can't do it... its too gross! So next year... we can not plant them anywhere near where they were this year... which may be kind of hard since they are in 5 beds!!! Equivalent to 4 - 4x16feet beds.

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May 7th

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May 18th.

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May 25th

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May 31st.

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June 11th.

These are German Butterball Potatoes. They are really yummy!! they really are like butter inside, so yellow and smooth! This bed sprouted the best... but they also had their cover on all winter mostly!




These are the La Ratte Fingerlings - they just may be our favorite potato so far! They have purple flowers and grow pretty tall as you can see.

Don't they have such pretty little flowers!!? Apparently they actually make little seeds too! Amazing... Maybe i will see if i can save some and see how long it takes to grow something from an actual potato-seed rather than a seed-potato. Should be interesting.

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June 17th.

Looking for potato bugs...