Gardening lore says that you should plant potatoes on St. Patrick’s day. Matthew planted exactly one week early this year.
This year, we saved our own seed potatoes. This basically means we selected some of each variety from last year’s crop, set them aside (so they didn’t get eaten), and then, a few weeks before planting, let the eyes grow.
They planted 25 pounds of potatoes in one morning.
Happy St. Patrick’s day [tomorrow]!
Related posts:
Taters
They grow in the ground these days
Celebrate St. Paddy’s Day with Green Food
Her Green Life 
I’m trying a radical new approach this year and planting the potatoes in containers. It’s partly to save space in the garden, and partly because I seem to destroy at least a third of the harvest each year by spearing them with the pitchfork when I dig them up. It’s sort of an experiment, so we’ll see if it works out!
Oh… and I’ve never actually bought seed potatoes. My first potato crop was a complete accident when some potato eyes from the compost sprouted on their own accord. Now I generally just save the ones that are too small to eat, or have stuck their heads above ground and turned green. I usually just toss them in a paper sack and then when spring rolls around they have started sprouting.
But I’m curious… how did you keep your seed potatoes from sprouting until you were ready?
As far as I know, you can’t really keep them from sprouting, but we go through periodically and break off the eyes, this keeps both the ones we’re eating and the ones we’re planting in better shape.
I’ll have to consult the gardener, but I think the plan is to buy new seed potatoes every few years or so, because the old stock can start getting susceptible to disease.
If you’re not planting too many, pots make sense. If you have access to any of the burlap/jute coffee bean sacks, you could also fill those with dirt and plant in there. And I’ve heard of people planting the potatoes directly in hay (or straw?) bales. The plant will grow, and when you’re ready to harvest, just break apart the bale – much easier than digging, but not practical with how many we plant — oh well!
How totally bizarre… when I went to comment it suddenly told me I couldn’t comment because my email address was associated with another WordPress account and I had to log in… then it suddenly popped up my old avatar from the dead blog… hmmm… let’s see what it does this time…
Good GAWD… now I seem to have 2 wordpress accounts? But really they’re gravatar accounts? help…
Well anyhow… guess you know it’s me…