A couple of weeks ago I received a gardening catalog from a small company in Maine offering several varieties of potatoes and how to grow them. My mother explained to me in the 1930s and 1940s, it was common for people to grow potatoes in their back yard gardens. Growing up in a small village in northern Ohio, they planted a garden every year, including potatoes. She told me an amusing story of how her father would have a farmer friend bring in two truckloads of raw animal manure and dump it in their back yard. The odor was horrible, and it would infuriate their neighbors up and down the street!
Potatoes originated in what is now the country of Peru about 10,000 years ago. Through the centuries, the humble potato has become a staple food crop all over the world. There are many theories as to why potatoes were given the nickname. ‘Spuds.’ Many feel the term originated from a short dagger called a ‘spad’ that was used to dig up root crops. Another theory is a sharp tool called a spud was used by farmers in New Zealand in the mid 1840s, and it became a slang word for potatoes.
Potatoes need more fertilizer than most vegetable crops. (My grandfather’s bumper potato crop was probably a result of the two truckloads of manure!) Basically, brown skinned potatoes or the russet types are used for baking. Red, yellow, or white potatoes have a starchy or waxy flesh. In addition, there are purple-colored potatoes and the fingering varieties. They are planted as small tubers in full sunshine as soon as the soil warms up in the spring. The potato catalog from Maine says not to plant the tubers too deeply. (1 inch deep in the north and 4 inches deep in southern warmer climates.) As the green sprouts emerge from the soil, they need to be covered up in a hill and the soil continued to be added as they grow. Hilling is usually done a couple of times during the growing season. The plants need at least one inch of water per week or the potatoes might become knobby and hollow. There are various blights and fungal infections that can attack potatoes. Keep a sharp outlook for insects on and under the leaves and stems. Never plant potatoes in an area where you have grown peppers, tomatoes, potatoes or eggplants in the past 3 or 4 years. It takes seven to eight weeks to harvest the potatoes.
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The Maine catalog names many different types of potatoes with exotic names such as Prairie Blush, Baltic Rose, Caribou, Keuka Gold, Rose Finn Apple Fingerling, Russian Banana Fingerling, and many more!
Be sure to listen to my podcasts, ‘In the Garden with Rick,’ at https://anchor.fm/in-the-garden-with-rick/ In a future podcast we will be discussing scented geraniums in greater detail.
Image by Couleur