Last year, I had pretty good success with my straw method of growing potatoes. I'll be using that method again this year. I'm doing a few things differently, however. I'm actually chitting out my potatoes this year. I usually don't do this, but I have a reason. I'm cutting the larger potatoes that I chit out so that I have more to plant. I want to see if I can duplicate last year's harvest using few seed potatoes. I am trying to figure out the most frugal way to get the most potatoes in my harvest.
Just for a reminder, here was my potato bed last year and some photos of what we harvested.
I planted a mix of Red Norlands, Mountain Rose, Kennebec and Yukon Gold.
This year, I'm going with Red Norland and Yukon Gold.
Some of these chitted out nicely. I cut the larger ones in half. For me to cut them in half, they have to have eyes all around them.
The 6 on this tray, I just bought. I'm leaving them out in the light. That will cause them to start to chit out.
This is a nicely chitted potato.
I didn't cut it because it only chit on one end.
By this weekend, if the weather holds, and we manage to get over to the feed store for a bale of straw, I'll get these all planted out. I'm going to get a scale before harvesting so that I can get an accurate weight on how many I've grown. I know that I have 8 pounds of seed potatoes going in.
This will be a new adventure, for sure.
Conda here, can't wait to see your potato bounty!
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