Planting Potatoes-I Chit You Not

 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.

Beginning of July Garden Update

<Cranberry beans
Arapaho Fish Hill beans>

Arapaho Fish Hill beans

The peas are about at the end of the road.

Blooming Prairie beans on the top tier, Dragon Tongue beans on the middle tier.

Purple Podded Pole beans

Jerusalem artichokes

French lavender

Flood Pole beans

Tall Trailing nasturtium

Golden Nugget cherry tomatoes

Jimmy Nardello sweet pepper

Black Beauty eggplant

I always heard the saying "knee high by the 4th of July". I wonder if waist high is even better?

Golden Delicious apple tree...and a mess that desperately needs to be cleaned up.

Fuji apple tree

Top row is Snow Princess calendula, middle row is Bright Lights cosmos and on the bottom are Love in a Mist.

The grapes should be back with a vengeance by next summer.

Purple Emporer nasturtium

Oregon Spring tomato

The closest is a Blue Beauty and the one further away is a Paul Robeson.

A pathetic yellow summer squash.

Holy spaghetti squash!

These potatoes leaves are dying back so we'll harvest these in the next few days.

Yard Long beans in both red and green.

We're letting that bag of potatoes dry out until tomorrow and we'll see what we got in there.

Peppermint stick zinnia in the front and gorgeous looking collard greens in the back.

Maxibel and Tanya's Pink Pod bush beans. These are going to be absolutely loaded!

The backside of the spaghetti squash bed. That lettuce has seen better days, for sure!

The onions are getting big.

More baby spaghetti squash on the backside of the bed.

Pink Plume celery and Longue Rouge Sang carrots

Sword lettuce and cilantro that is going to seed. I planted garlic where the bok choy was.

Mixed Bachelor Button flowers. I read somewhere that these are edible. I don't eat them. I just like them.

Golden beets

Chioggia beets

This is either white or pink Japanese dandelions. I'll have to wait until they bloom to find out which pot is which.

Jibai Shimoshirazu cucumber plant

The walkway to the back garden.

The side garden...this is where I put a lot of the things that I want to climb the fence.

Blooming Prairie "bush" beans. I love the coloring on these.

Egyptian Walking Onions

Garden sage. This got a bit of a sunburn.

Cucamelon plant. I'm not sure if I'll get anything off of these or not.

Strawberry spinach. I grew this last year and we enjoyed it.

In the bed: Lacinato kale, Drunk Woman Frizzy Head lettuce, Parisienne carrots and fenugreek. In the pots below are basil (Thai, if I remember correctly) and lemongrass.

The rhubarb was traumatized when the bottom fell out of the bed. It's starting to come back.

Chioggia beets. In one pot, I planted echinacea and in the other I planted dill. I'm seeing how both companion plant with the beets.

I'm very proud of this spaghetti squash!

Nasturtiums!

Giant Italian parsley

Casper eggplant. This little guy has been through a lot and I'm quite surprised that it's still growing.

Sunburn tomatoes.

Gold Nugget cherry tomatoes

The Spring Blush peas that I'm saving for seed. I can't find anywhere to buy them, so I grew them out to save seed.