The successful treasure hunt was a much-needed mini adventure during a year with a little less traveling than normal.
I had never grown potatoes before, but I had always wanted to. When everyone was freaking out at the groceries stores back in March, it seemed like a good a time as any to cross it off my gardening bucket list. The first ones went into a grow bag a friend had given me.
Everyone thinks gardening requires some magical trait called a "green thumb," but I've found a green thumb is earned, not given. I read as much as I could about growing potatoes before planting them, but without any actual previous experience, I wasn't sure what to expect. My plants started off growing fast and getting huge. Then some storms came through, and the lush stalks flopped over--at least the ones in the grow bag.
The thing about potatoes is, not only were they completely new to me, but they were also covered in eighteen inches of soil. I could see what the tops were doing, but the important part was far out of sight. I just had to have faith that they were making potatoes down there. The suspense was killing me!
Then the leaves--and even some of the stalks--started to turn yellow and brown and die. I started Googling, but with no good answers. Yellowing leaves can either mean they are almost ready to harvest...or that they have a fungal disease that kills the entire plant. Everything said they would flower before they were ready to harvest, but I hadn't seen even a hint of blooms. I tried sticking my hand down in the soil to feel for potatoes, but all I could find was dirt and stalks.
By this morning, a couple of the stalks had rotted completely. I was afraid somewhere underground, my potatoes would start rotting too. I decided it was time to take the leap and starting digging everything up.
When I dug down to the bottom of the bag, the mysteries of potatoes were finally revealed to me. I struck gold! 'Yukon Gold,' that is.
Having confirmed that there were, indeed, potatoes hiding at the very bottom of the bag, I decided to dump the whole thing out to get a better look. Of course I wanted an easier time finding the potatoes, but I also wanted to answer my burning questions: how DO potatoes grow? What is happening underground?
When I planted the potatoes, I planted cut up chunks of potato with an eye or two that some growth coming out of it. Well, just about every eye--even the ones that didn't look like much--ended up having a stalk and some fibrous roots growing out of it. Some of the stalks were stronger than others, depending on the size of the eye. As the stalk and the roots grew, they basically fed off the original potato chunk--it just turned to liquidy mush with a skin left behind. A little bit above that, new potatoes formed along the base of the stem. The large potatoes readily tumbled here and there in the dirt, but there were a few tiny baby potatoes still stuck to the stalks. It just took a little twist to free them.
The larger potatoes took a little more effort to find. You have to be gentle with the potatoes to avoid accidentally cutting or piercing them. I carefully sifted through the dirt with gloves to try to find the remaining potatoes like buried treasure. I read somewhere that you'll get three to five potatoes for every potato piece you plant. Considering it was my first try, I was pleased with the eighteen I found in my bag of soil from only five pieces.
Next weekend I will dig up the potatoes I planted in the ground and see what I find!
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