The garden bounced back beautifully from the mid-March frost. The tomato plants have grown 4-5 inches and have small yellow flowers. The lettuce is becoming leafy and the cucumbers have even started sprouting new leaves. All this activity encouraged me to round out the garden with two rows of squash, cantaloupe and honeydew melons.
When I’m out at the garden, I usually work my way around each bed, pull weeds, try to avoid fire ants and zone out. It’s a great physical release and cheap mental therapy. I was extra-zoned the other day and started yanking up some rather tough weeds. I snapped out of it and realized the entire bed was filled with similar looking leafy weeds…. all lined up in a nice row. I had weeded my way around to the bed where I planted pieces of potato about a month ago. Potatoes should come up within about 10 days, so by this point, I had given up hope.
I followed some YouTube directions on how to plant potatoes, but as with the rest of this gardening experiment, I wasn’t quite sure what I was doing. I cut the seed potatoes into chunks with at least two eyes per chunk and let them dry or “cure” for a few days to avoid the risk of rot once put into the ground. Then I planted the potato chunks about 3-4 inches down in acidic soil with a good amount of compost or manure. Once the plant comes up and begins to grow, the potatoes can push up out of the soil which is no good. Sun-burned potatoes turn green and are inedible. Hilling is the act of adding 2-3 inches of soil to the row to protect the potatoes from the sun.
Another handy tip – potatoes should be harvested 2-3 weeks after the actual plant dies. Which is good to know, because otherwise how are you supposed to know what’s going on down there…
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