Potatoes 2011 (success!)

I've been trying to get a potato barrel to work for several years now. I've grown a few very tiny potatoes, but nothing worthy of any respect. But while digging around in the barrel the other day I found two potatoes of respectable size. Whether they can be eaten is a subject for another time.

2 potatoes and a neighbor kid

I'm still recovering files (only 40,000+ processed so far) so I don't have the pictures of the barrel over the season. You have to hear me talk about it instead.

I started with actual seed potatoes from the Ace Hardware near Yummy's place. First time I'd seen them for sale. They were put in a barrel with a few inches of good dirt and dead vegetation under and over them. I worried at first that they'd just rot, but after a week or two I saw the plant peeking up.

In a previous attempt I'd let the plant grow up, fall over, and then bury it. I wanted runners that went around and around. That was wrong. This time, as they grew up, I kept burying them so they'd always just have the upper most leaves poking up. Amazingly, I had to add dirt twice a week.

Then I waited for the leaves to die off. That's how I'm supposed to know to harvest them. But they didn't die. July came and cooked the plants, but it just grew new leaves. In late October they finally died. I could have harvested them then, but Yummy saw something saying that leaving them in the ground makes the skins tougher and the potatoes better able to survive long periods on a shelf without rotting. And I had no good place to put the dirt. So I waited. Yes, until a warm day in early January. Don't judge me.

I think I can still improve things, but I'm pretty happy with this year's results.