I love to stick my hands in the soil and retrieve the buried bounty, with a yield of eight to ten potatoes for every one that I plant. Of all the root vegetables I grow, it is the potatoes that give me the biggest thrill at harvest time. The tubers are wildly productive in the well-draining, rock-free soil the beds provide, and the vines require deep watering only once each week. I achieve an enormous harvest-enough to feed two for nearly a year-by planting potatoes in two 4'-x-8' raised beds. But in my experience, containers like these require constant attention to watering, and yield smaller harvests than growing in a raised bed. You can grow potatoes in containers, pots, or a special “ grow bag”. Give them the following and they will accept almost any planting situation: They are easy to grow and produce abundant harvests. It is free.Įach time you return to comment on the Learning English site, you can use your account and see your comments and replies to them. Or you may create one on the Disqus system. Enter the login for your social media account. They are for Disqus, Facebook, Twitter and Google. Under the box, you can see four images for social media accounts.Would you like to grow your own potatoes? a substance that is found in certain foods (such as bread, rice, and potatoes) to keep something the same or prevent it from being damaged or destroyed a tool with a long handle that is used for lifting and throwing dirt, sand, snow, etc. to press your hand or a cloth on a surface and move it back and forth to grown or developed fully grown or developed to feel very worried or anxious about something : to feel stress Faith Pirlo adapted it for Learning English. Jessica Damiano wrote this article for the Associated Press. Be sure to eat them right away as they do not preserve, store, or travel well. They are high in water and low in starch, which makes them a favorite for cooking. True new potatoes are harvested from green plants. These young, thin-skinned potatoes should not be confused with the smaller reddish kinds of mature potatoes identified in stores as “new potatoes.” New potatoes can be harvested earlier in the season, right after the plants flower. Injured potatoes will not store as long, so eat those first. This will intensify the sugars and change their flavor. If preserved and stored in this way, they should last six to eight months.Īvoid putting the potatoes in the refrigerator. The temperature should be about three to four degrees Celsius. ![]() This will help thicken their skin and close off any small cuts.Īfter preserving, store the potatoes in a much cooler area like an underground room that has good air flow and that is darker. Then, place them in a cool, dark place that stays between 10 and 15 degrees Celsius. To preserve the potatoes, lay them out on a piece of thick paper, like newspaper. You can eat the potatoes right away or preserve them for later. 1, 2022, image provided by Jessica Damiano shows potato plants growing in fabric grow bags in Glen Head, NY. Make sure to go back through the soil and check for any remaining potatoes. Do this in a circle around the individual plants. Then, carefully move the instrument back and forth to unearth the potatoes by lifting the roots. Allow 15 to 30 centimeters around the outer part of the plant before putting in the tool. You can use a digging instrument instead of a shovel to help. When digging, try to avoid cutting through the potatoes. If the skin rubs off, fill the hole back up and check again in about a week. The skin of a mature potato will stick to the potato if you run your fingers over it. Carefully dig into the soil near a tester plant, and take a potato from the outer part of the roots. If you are still not sure about when to harvest, dig up a small test potato. After two weeks, the potatoes are ready to harvest. If the plants are not cut, they will just die back on their own. To help the potatoes mature, especially in wetter climates, you should cut the plants at soil level. You can stop watering the plants around this time. This will happen between 60 and 120 days from planting, depending on the weather and the kind of potato that is planted. ![]() She said the best time to start digging up potatoes is when half the plant’s leaves have turned yellow. Jessica Damiano writes about gardening for the Associated Press. So how do we know exactly when to harvest? ![]() This could stress the plant and its root system. If we dig potatoes up too early, they may be too small. Because potatoes grow underground, we cannot see their size, feel how solid they are or smell them to know when they are ready to eat. Many gardeners who grow potatoes are not sure when to dig them up.
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