SAVING SEEDS - THE POTATO
By: Ron
The One Who Walks Two Paths
This is the staple of all the vegetables that I grow - 99% of all meals that I make have a potato dish with them.
The English treat potatoes like we do the tomato. You strive to be the first on the block to have that first tomato of the season. They go to great lengths to have that first potato, including planting the tubers in the beginning of March and placing small greenhouse row covers over them to keep the frost and freeze off.
Potatoes like a long cool to a slightly warm growing season. That's why Idaho produces some of the most mammoth spuds. I try to time the planting of potatoes to be around when the night time temps do not drop below 40. I then keep plenty of straw handy to mound over the plant at night if the temps threaten to dip below 40 or frost is possible. I plant tubers the size of a golfball just "as is" and any the size of a tennis ball I cut in half, making sure that there are several eyes on each piece. I then plant them in a six-inch-deep trench about a foot apart and put enough soil over the tubers to cover the tops.
As the plant grows, I mound the soil up around the potato. When it has grown at least a foot tall, I mound, leaving at least 8 inches of the plant showing. I continue to mound the soil around the plant until I have a mound 8 inches above the original soil line. This is where all the potatoes will form. I then mulch heavily with straw to keep the soil temps cool.
Once the plants wither and die it is time to start digging the potatoes up. Once I dig the potato I let it dry in my barn out of direct sun for the rest of the day. I separate them by size and box loosely in small crates and place in the cellar. Any potato smaller than a golfball I can or freeze.
In February you want to choose your next seed potatoes for planting. What I look for is a potato smaller than a tennis ball that has kept its form well, meaning it is not dry and wrinkled or mushy. This ensures that I continue to breed for long storing ability. If you plant a potato that has not kept well, all the potatoes from that plant will not keep well and so on and so on.
The potatoes I have chosen will be brought out of the cellar and washed lightly, then placed where it is warm and light (but not full sun). This will start the eyes forming. I like to have the seed potatoes started before planting, but this is a personal preference.