2025 potato harvest. 49.2 pounds minus the 3 or so pounds I got impatient and harvested last week.
This is from an in ground bed. It is 7×7 feet at it’s widest points but is not square in shape so it is not the full 49 square feet of planting space. I’ve been growing potatoes in this area for 4 or 5 years and, with the exception of last year, have gotten a harvest like this every time. Last year in late June, before any tubers formed, the grasshoppers defoliated every last plant in this bed so there was no harvest.
I plant using the Ruth Stout method with one exception and that is that I make sure the seed potatoes are nested into the soil before I cover them with mulch.
I never honor the spacing suggestions for things and potatoes are not an exception. I think most of the seed potatoes were spaced 6 to 8 inches apart.
I generally only do one application of mulch but make it quite deep and then ignore the bed until harvest. This year I am wishing I had added a little more mulch once the plants started coming up. The microbiology in my garden is so active they ate most of the mulch I put down and some of the potatoes were exposed to sun and turned green once the plants began to die back signaling the end of the season. I will save the green ones to plant next season. There is no mounding and I do not try to force a larger harvest by adding soil; it makes them harder to harvest when they are too deep anyway. I really do just plant and then ignore, or admire as the season goes on.
This bed is the most disturbed bed in my garden due to the intensity of the harvest of the tubers. Tomorrow it will get a fresh layer of mulch to suppress the weeds that are now going to germinate because I stirred up the seed while harvesting. I will probably plant winter kill cover crop to help the biology recover from the disturbance.
This variety is Kennebec. It is my favorite for cooking with. They don’t disintegrate like a russet can in some applications if you take them just a bit too far. The inter-webs say this about the Kennebec potato:
Kennebec is a medium- to late-maturing white potato. It was bred by the USDA and selected by Presque Isle Station, Maine, in 1941. Kennebec is not under plant variety protection. This fast-growing variety has high yields. It maintains good quality in storage and is grown for both fresh market use and for potato chip manufacturing.
I have never found them in a grocery store so I need to grow all I can for my potato needs. Even though this is nearly 50 pounds it probably won’t be enough.
The next step for these will be sorting, pulling any that I accidentally damaged while I harvested them. I hand dig to minimize problems but my fingernails scratched the skin on a few of them. I will also pull any that have scab. Scab doesn’t affect the edibility of the tubers but I won’t replant them. They will get eaten before non-scab potatoes do. Then they will be brushed clean, no washing, and set under canvas tarps in my back room to cure. They need to be kept out of the light or they will turn green which makes them bitter and slightly toxic.
If you have a decent harvest make sure you cure your potatoes so they will store longer. – Garlic and onions, too.
Don’t store your potatoes with onions or apples. The chemicals released by both with make your potatoes go bad faster. Potatoes want to be stored cool with a decent amount of humidity. Damp sand works well, or a root cellar that isn’t too dry. Check stored potatoes weekly for any that might be going off and dispose of them. The saying “a rotten apple spoils the bunch” applies to potatoes too.
