A few days ago we got our potatoes planted in the big garden. Matt planned to plant more than usual and we did—we planted three long rows.
Matt and I like to plant Kennebec potatoes. Normally we cut the seed potatoes up just before we put them in the ground. This year Matt said he wanted to try cutting them up a few days before and letting them heal over to see if that made any difference.
As we cut the seed taters up we make sure to leave at least one eye on each piece.
Two rows are planted with the seed taters he cut up prior to planting and the other row we cut up just before planting.
Pap always cut his just before planting. Sometimes he added fertilizer to the row as he planted and sometimes he didn’t. Matt and I don’t fertilize till later. Pap usually added fertilizer when he hilled the rows for the first time.
A lot of folks say to make sure the eye is facing up so that the potato can see where it’s going as it grows. Pap said it doesn’t matter how you plant them the eye will find it’s way to the top just fine.
A few of you may remember Granny planting some of her tater peelings. We’ve never done that on purpose like Granny, but we have grown some dandy potatoes from peelings I threw in the garden for compost.
Once the potatoes start growing we like to hill them up at least once and hopefully twice. In years past we’ve used tillers and hoes to accomplish that chore.
This year we used a new attachment on Matt’s tractor: a hiller.
Oh my goodness the tractor made this year’s potato planting the easiest we’ve ever done!
Matt used the tractor to lay off the rows then the new hiller pushed dirt over the seed potatoes covering them up snugly where hopefully they will grow and produce a good harvest.
I wish Pap could have enjoyed the ease of using a tractor, but the tillers he used were certainly a step ahead of the mules, plows, and hoes he used when he was a boy.
I said it was the easiest planting we’ve done, but I should have said the easiest we’ve done in the big garden.
For several years we’ve grown potatoes in grow bags. They do well and they are easy to plant. When we grow in the bags we never hill them, so once they are planted they are left alone until harvest time. A super easy process for growing potatoes on a limited scale.
Last night’s video: Old Fashioned Salmon Patties with Beans, Fried Taters, & Cornbread in Appalachia.
Tipper
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Loved the potato planting video. It was so fun watching y’all get that big old field of potatoes down. Can hardly wait to see the yield this year. I know Mr. Matt and you Miss Tipper just love that tractor. I’m waiting to see you use it too. Mr. Matt handles it like a pro. Love it. God bless y’all and that beautiful field of delicious potatoes. Prayers for all, for medical, mental, financial and whatever the need be. God bless everyone today, tomorrow and always.
I haven’t thought about Kennebec potatoes in a very long time but this video took me right back about 70 years to when my dad planted an acre of them with help from me and my two older sisters. We did it all by hand, including the hilling and fertilizing. They were excellent potatoes and we were pretty proud of all the work we put into them, much as we complained at the time. I live in France now and, at the huge farmers market every Wednesday near my house, I like finding unfamiliar varieties of vegetables and trying them. I spotted a basket of nice looking potatoes and asked for a kilo of them. The young farmer asked me, ‘Bintje?’ which is pronounced like another word that rhymes with ‘witch.’ Haha, I was shocked until I realized he was talking about the potatoes and not me!
We planted our potatoes this morning. Last year we did Kennebecs and Russets but only did Russets this year. A few days ago we sowed radishes, lettuce, and beets-2 varieties of each. We’ll get our tomatoes, peppers and kale from the Mennonite nursery next month and we’ll plant our cucumbers, squash and zucchini from seeds a little later on. I hope our Malabar spinach comes back like yours always does.
If you harken to the old saying about planting potatoes on Good Friday, y’all are a might early, Tipper.
Tipper–My experience, spread over decades, is that allowing the cut potatoes to “cure” for two or three days is a plus. That’s particularly true if you get a real rainy spell immediately after planting. The cured or sealed potato pieces are less prone to rot.
You’ll find that the hiller a real blessing, I suspect. Potatoes (and especially Kennebecs) are bad to push up above the surface, and exposure to the light means green skin (it’s a bit poisonous). Hilling will help a lot.
My personal approach, in addition to letting the seed potatoes cure after cutting them up, was to make sure you had at least two eyes to a piece and to place the cut side down.
On a different front, Barbara Nichols-Dyer Mitchell asks about horny heads (we always called them knotty heads, and fisheries experts call them chubs–there are several kinds). I agree they are quite tasty, and if you score them a bit along the spine and then fry them crispy brown, the bones almost melt away. Knotty heads need moving water and are often found where trout are present. In fact, their small “sucker” type mouth notwithstanding, they will even hit small sub-surface flies used for trout. If I had a dollar bill for every one I’ve caught in my life, I’d be a mighty rich fellow. But even richer are some memories of fishing for them with Grandpa Joe as my companion. Two boys having fun–one of the two just happened to be trapped in an old man’s body.
I’m looking forward to seeing the potatoes come up. I’m sure they will do great!
I can just see my mother planting potatoes. Mommy could bend at the waist with her legs straight, place the seed taters down in the furrow with eyes pointed up and snuggle them right into the ground as if everybody did it that way. She would do that until she got to the end of the row or ran out of taters without standing back up. She planted everything that same way. I’m sure there are gymnasts who could do the same if they would but ordinary people would be sore for weeks if they tried.
Praying for all in need!
My parents planted potatoes in mounds that were all dug by hand. They continued to hill the mound up during each hoeing until the vines took over. Mom liked to plant a lot of her garden in mounds that didn’t seem necessary. My son-in-law watched me plant melons in a long mound a few years ago and thought I had lost my mind. I mound my cucumber and squash hills, too. My parents learned how to successfully raise a garden from their parents, who learned from their American Indian relatives, so I reckon I will carry on the tradition. The tater bugs destroyed my vines last year. I hand-picked them off and covered the row with a mesh fabric that didn’t help. Maybe grow bags or five-gallon buckets are the answer for this one-person-tater-loving household.
If we plant potatoes, we usually do them a little later, at the same time we plant our beans. I have found that beans and potatoes are great companions; potato bugs don’t like beans and bean bugs don’t like potatoes, so we alternate the rows and that cuts down on the number of pests for both.
It will be interesting to see which potatoes grow best, the ones cut to heal prior to planting or the ones planted right after cutting. Either way I hope y’all get a bountiful harvest!
Glad you got your potatoes in. I got a larger grow bag for mine this year. I planted them late last week. Love reading the blog and the videos on YouTube.
Talk of planting potatoes has me thinking back to when I was a runny nose kid in the late 50’ early 60’s. Today, this would cause today’s experts to have fits and maybe even kill some of them. My Granddaddy would mix up arsenic with well water in an old 5 gal lard can, he had made a handle for the can and would use a homemade broom straw (some say sage) broom and brush the tops of his arsh tater plants with this to kill the tater bugs. I guess doing things like this along with many other things considered unhealthy/ dangerous today killed him, he only lived to be 83 years old.
Good Morning Tipper! Whenever I grow potatoes I never harvest any more than I plant. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong. I’m making a smaller garden this year anyway. Blessings
I’ll be interested to find out what you all think about cut & plant or cut – wait – plant. I like to wait a day or two but have planted both ways. Never tried hard to see if there was a difference. I planted about a 6′ row of potatoes. They do not get enough time here to do well before the tops die down. I am trying to sprout sweet potatoes this year to get a hill or two. Glad to know the tractor is paying for itself, sorta. I keep doing things the old-fashioned, harder way on this little dab of ground. Reckon I learned it from the cradle until I got case hardened and can’t change.
I started my sweet potato slips yesterday. I have tried this method for two years and have been very happy. The yield wasn’t as good last year, but I think it was the dry weather at the wrong time. I soak the left over sweet potatoes in a bucket of rain water for 24 hours. I then place them in pots with good potting soil, keep them watered and protect them if the temps drop low. In mid may, they are usually ready to be transplanted into the garden. I was skeptical about doing this……but it sure has worked for me.
While growing up I helped my daddy plant many rows of potatoes. He would dig several long trenches in the garden, then add some fertilizer. He would tell me and mom, who helped plant the seed potatoes, to mix up the fertilizer with the soil before dropping in a potatoes or they would get burned. We then covered them with dirt. We usually had enough potatoes until March or April the next year. Mom would go out later and dig enough small potatoes and cook them with her green beans. Oh they are so good that way. My husband and I used to plant potatoes but haven’t for quite a few years. We plan on raising, hopefully if the deer don’t eat them, a few tomatoes and cucumbers this year.
I’ve been watching your YouTube videos for years. See I live in the city in Michigan all my life. I’m 63. At the age of 12 I’ve been so interested in the Appalachian life and the way people used to live. I’m a country girl at heart. I’ve always wanted to move out of city life, but It never came to be. It seems my heart has always wanted to live that way. I’ve read books, and watched videos about that way of life for some years now. Thank goodness YouTube came around their are so many videos to watch. Your YouTube channel makes me so happy when I watch them. So I will live vicariously through yours. lol. Your blog and videos are a blessing to me and I just love them. God bless.
Good morning, Tipper and Acorns. It is going to be another glorious day. Every day is because GOD loves us. TY for another great video yesterday Tipper and Matt. We used to plant an acre of Kennebeck potatoes every year. We never had a Hiller. I loved planting potatoes. I loved all the chores of farming. I’m so happy for you and Matt and the blessing of the tractor and the attachments. Does Matt go Horny Head fishing? Those tiny fish are the best fish ever. Lots of bones to dodge but mighty fine eating. I keep everyone here and up Wilson Holler in my prayers. TY for your prayers for us. I love y’all.
He never has but I’ve heard they are tasty 🙂
Barbara, judging by some of comments, you seem to me to be a “country girl.” We also never owned a Hiller. After the mule died, I would drive our tractor, straddle the row pulling a mule plow with a half shovel plow mounted to it, Daddy would be guiding the plow. You would go up one side and come back down the other side, doing this would not only cover the potatoes but make a perfect mound on top of the row. We would keep using this plow to mound more dirt around the plants as they grew. Btw we would use a two horse middlebuster to plow them up.
So glad you got your potatoes planted. Our garden is going to be rested this year, but next year it will be back in full swing. We’ve got rye growing on it right now, we’ll cut it down and leave it, then cover it will compost and put a cover over all of that and let nature takes it’s course.
Planting potatoes in the ground here doesn’t work since we have voles. They destroyed the crop I planted 3 years ago, so now we plant our potatoes in containers which has worked well. I hope you get a huge crop!
I’ll be anxiously waiting to see how they do this year. I bet they’ll be amazing.
Kennebec is our best keeper. We grow others and have to use them up first as they don’t keep very well. So glad y’all have the tractor and attachments to make things much easier. Such a blessing.
Update on B. She saw the team at Cincinnati and they are more hopeful. The main doctor stated they have 3 trials going for this type of tumor that looked promising. One of his other patients that also had a grim prognosis has now lived 3 years and is doing well. There is no cure. He said they will do another scan in a couple of weeks. He knows people everywhere are praying and told her momma when they do the next scan “if” the tumor is still there how they will proceed. We continue to pray for a miracle.
I will keep praying for little B and her family.
Praying for little B. Bless her heart. I am so sorry.
I look forward to your post every morning.
May God bless you and keep you this day.
I love potatoes, God bless you, something is affecting my brother’s eyesight, medications or tumors? anyways he see an eye doctor today, God bless him, I’ll be going to the podiatrist this afternoon, and then by the doctor’s office hopefully to pick up a kit, so I can leave a stool sample, get it tested see if it has blood in it, it’s been the hardest thing getting my doctor to receive these messages about what they want to do from my heart doctor, God help in Jesus name
Praying for you both!
My Daddy and later on me would almost always put either 5-10-10 or 10-10-10 fertilizer in the row before planting anything. We would also run a plow back through the row to “stir up or mix”the fertilizer in with the dirt before planting anything. The old time mule farmers had a guano distributor they would use to put the fertilizer in the row and stir it up before planting. We would not plant anything directly on top of the fertilizer. I think the machines the big time farmers use to plant potatoes will not drop every potato with the eyes turned up. My son and I have pretty much decided to plant nothing but a few tomatoes this year and buy anything else we want from a local produce stand. We are already in an early drought and the last few years have all been very dry and hot. This reason along with deer and my arthritis making it so hard to try to work in a garden makes it no longer worth trying to have a garden just for the two of us, last year we only had tomatoes and nothing else from anything else we planted. Our green beans were looking good until the deer came through one night and made them look like a lawn mower had ran over them. I am laying awake right at this moment with the toes on my right foot hurting from gout. I read yesterday’s comments about gout and need to talk to my doctor about trying one of them. One thing that has helped in the past is to drink tart cherry juice. I am trying to decide which is worse, the pain from the gout or the side effects these medicines can cause. After not wanting even a bed sheet to touch my foot in the past, I think I will deal with the side effects.
Randy I’m sorry about the gout. I pray you get over it.
Randy, I’m praying for you. I’ve watched my husband suffer awful before he started the medicine he’s on now. The doctor said the gout was worse than the side effects. I pray you find relief soon.
Thank you, I will survive, it is just going to be painful for awhile! Hopefully I can get it cured before it gets real bad, I don’t know of anything I have ate to set it off.
I haven’t had a flareup since I started taking a tart cherry capsule every morning. I was drinking tart cherry juice but it got so expensive. When it hits my big toe I don’t even want a sock on that foot. When it gets to the ankle I don’t even want anyone to walk into the room and possibly shake the floor a little. I also have it in some fingers. It’ll settle in any joint that gets injured and I’ve injured probably every joint I have in 83 years of the things I’ve done. The medicines the doctors want to give out cause other issues.
Jackie, right now it is in my big toe on my right foot, I hope it does not spread. Last year it got in my toes and ankle on my left foot, I didn’t want a bed sheet to touch my foot because of it hurting so bad. I have been taking a tart cherry tablet, my problem is I will quit taking them when I get better. I need to start taking one each day. I am also afraid or worried about the side effects of these medicines for gout. As for injuries during my lifetime, I joke and say when the undertaker looks at me and sees all of the scars, knots bumps and bruises he will say “I sure hope he lost, I don’t want to see the other fellow if he (Randy) won.”
Sorry about the gout, Randy. That’s some bad stuff to have and anyone else here that has it, I will be praying.