Our growing garden

My post today is about something new that I've never done - growing potatoes.  Many years ago I bookmarked this link from Heavenly Homemakers, one of my favorite blogs. I've hung onto this print-out for a couple years, moving it here and there. Finally my mom found an article too and got interested so boom we were on a mission.

About two weeks ago we made our potato pots, four in total, bought some seed potatoes, used some old chicken wire we had laying around, old newspaper to line them, and some bags of potting soil/compost.  The cost really wasn't that much for how many we ended up planting.  The basic theory is to plant some seed potatoes with eyes, let them sprout, once the plants get to a certain point, cover with another layer of soil, wait for plants to grow again, cover again and repeat... once you reach the top, you let the plants grow and blossom.  Wait a couple weeks after the plants die and turn yellow and then clip the the plastic ties used to hold the pots together and VIOLA pounds and pounds of potatoes to store for the winter!  I'm thinking digging through the dirt for all those treasure is going to be an excellent job for my little ones.

There does seem to be some disagreement or confusion over at what point we put another layer of soil over the plants.... one of the bonuses of the internet - you learn how to do things and then you learn there are many ways to do the same things.  Some say 1-2 inches, others say 7-8 inches... big difference there.  We might try one of each since we have multiple pots. Don't know how it works but supposedly it does.


We'll play it by ear this year and make changes for next year. :)  Have any of you done this before?

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