*one potato, two potato, three...

Gardening is many things to many people. Whether it is done as a hobby, a stress reducer or provision for your family, gardening has many merits. For me it serves as all of the above. Gardening is a joy that I learned to love at my mother and fathers sides. They were pretty traditional in their gardening each year and I had great opportunity to learn their tricks and tips along the way.

One of the potato patches are shown here in the photo, closest to the bottom part of the image.

This spring we have many beautiful lush green vegetable plants growing in our gardens. The weather has allowed for early planting and we did jump on that opportunity.  My dh and I purchased 50 pounds of seed potatoes in early March.  Today those potato plants are an admirable beauty - in our eyes!   Momma and I stopped in at the Farm Center last week to pick up some okra seeds and found that they still had potato seeds in the store.  I inquired as to the price and was told they were giving them away at this point. Um... did you say FREE? Oh yeh, I am all about that. I will take two bags please. (total of 50 more pounds)  Momma and I worked last week to get half of those planted and the other half will go in this weekend.

I plant our potatoes in 4 inch deep trenches which allows me to go back and add mulched hay or dirt as they mature.  This continues as they grow their foliage until I have the rich soil and mulch piled up around the base of each potato plant. We should be able to start harvest some of the delicious new potatoes from the first ones planted sometime in May.  Normally I will let each potato plant finish out with the foliage dieing out before we dig them.   If possible and the weather is permitting, meaning it is dry I will even leave the in the ground several weeks after the tops have completely died off.  We do not have a root cellar, so leaving them in the ground as long as I can prolongs their shelf life a bit more.