Early Potato Harvest

The Alta Blush are in.  I dug them by hand the way my son TOG does.  He likes to sift his hands through the bed wearing gloves and gets all the different sizes of spuds.  He really preferred to treat the soft skinned earlies with gentleness.

When I had helped him out with my vintage potato rake (it looks like a five tined bent pitch fork) I could sense his concern for his spuds.  Even when I had covered the steel tines with rubber tubing he still wasn’t too pleased.  And now, five years later, I’ve gone over to his preferred harvesting method.  For the earlies at least.

I’ve always wanted to not miss any spuds, not even the smallest ones.  This was partly due to my thriftiness but also to my strict rotations -- to not transfer diseases with volunteer potato plants the next year.  Now there’s a third reason.  My younger son’s shared garden plot had a progression of volunteer spuds for several years ("Oh, look at the nice potato plant!  It came up all by itself.") and now there is an increase in wire worms.  Those nasty, half inch long, thin, yellow-orange critters that dig into most roots and soil vegetables.  They’re not that easy to get rid of and so are not a good thing to have living in a soil near you.

I filled a two gallon bucket with new potatoes and weeded any small but over mature weeds at the same time.  The weeds with seeds went into my curbside compostables can.  Younger weeds went into my own compost box.  Since these beds were brand new, first year beds taken from the lawn, I retrieved a good collection of stones as well.

The spuds were dumped onto the lawn and sprayed down to get all the dirt off them.  Gone are the days when we were taught that water washing was bad for them.  Years ago it was always a dusty day to try to slap the dirt off the cured spuds before storing.  As far as we can see, washing immediately after harvesting has no negative effects.  

The potatoes were then weighed in batches on my small garden scale and then placed gently into a Lug – an industrial plastic type of box with ventilation holes that is stackable as well as nestable for empty storage.  These are great things the commercial growers use for their blueberries and I’ve managed to collect several Lugs from the side of the road that have escaped from their trucks. 

The Lug in the picture contains 42 lbs with 4 spuds having beetle bites and one a bit green from the sun (which we’ll cut and discard the bad halves).  I had already picked 9 lbs earlier on July 19^th which makes my crop of earlies, 51lbs from 74 square feet of bed.  That’s not one pound per square foot but still a decent crop for early season spuds.
 

My potatoes are planted in two rows, two feet apart, lengthwise down the bed.  The plants are spaced 18 inches apart.  After this year I believe I’ll plant the early season ones closer – probably 16 inches apart.  These Alta Blush had smaller plants than my main season potatoes so a bit tighter spacing should work.

After a day and a night under the deck out of direct sunlight, the lug will stay in a dark basement room with good ventilation and a light blanket over it until the garage is cooler in a month or so.  (The old adage of letting the spuds cure in the sun didn’t always work for me.  I once grew some Kenebecs that would turn green even if they only dreamed of daylight.)  In September, whatever isn’t eaten or given away by then will go into the potato bin in the corner of the garage.

My main season potatoes will be harvested soon. 

Happy Gardening.