GA: Harvested a few potatoes -- they're all small so far

Decided to hand-dig under a potato plant in the NW bed that had yellowed/died.  There were a few potatoes, but all small, like combined maybe one larger potato. 

We'll see what the others look like, but for now it's too early to dig up more.

GA: Planted potatoes, broccoli, chard, kale

Another busy day:

- Potatoes:  In the west bed (the slightly smaller bed) is the potato variety whose cut ones had less mold.  In the east bed (the slightly larger bed) is (a) the potato variety whose cut ones had a lot of mold, and in the SW corner of this bed are 6 potatoes from last year's harvest that sprouted, to fill in the bed.  Covered both beds right away with the same expensive agri-cover bought last year (which annoyingly has a few small holes already!).

- Broccoli:  In the 5-broc centre "row", the east-most is Belstar; the other 4 are Piracicaba.  Covered the bed right away (after planting the chard and kale in the same session) with one of the 5-set of huge sheets from VV, over hoops.  I can't get it taut and am a bit worried that it may tear badly quickly, but we'll see, and there are 4 others un-used to replace if needed...   I'm going to likely add a few more broccolis here soon, consisting of the wimpier ones.

- Chard:  In the broccoli bed.

- Kale:  In the broccoli bed.

Oh no! The cut potatoes are moldy! Were upstairs in spare room / hot!

Ack!!!  I hope this doesn't mean they're going to all rot in the ground!

Moved them to the basement today after seeing the moldiness.  Lesson learned -- next year put them in the basement right away.  One type is on the washing machine, the other on the freezer.

Cut the potatoes, so will have at least a week to heal

At the earliest the garden MIGHT be open next Saturday, in which case a week from today (Sunday) would be the soonest the potatoes could be planted.  So, this gives them a week to heal up from the cut.

And I forgot to write which varieties these are -- they're two that I bought at Ritchie's.  I have some fridge potatoes too from last year's leftover harvest that have sprouted, we'll see if those get planted too.

Last year's potatoes are sprouting (most of them)

I'll use them to grow some of this year's potatoes.

Potato harvest in yard -- north of the broccoli

Today was part deux of reclaiming the central part of the yard for the dogs!  So I pulled the rest of the potatoes -- these ones being from north of the broccoli.  The plants had long since flopped, but were very green, so I'm sure if I had left them in longer, the smaller ones would have kept growing, but that was not the priority this year.

A good harvest from that patch!  Many nice big ones!  These were Kennebecs.  They did at least as well as, maybe even better than, the AC Chaleurs.  So, I will definitely grow both of these varieties again in future.

Re-reading my note from the spring -- I had done the following experiment:  "The experiment is that in each type's northerm-most row, I added 1 Tbsp alfalfa (in addition to the above amendments)."  Well, ha!  I completely forgot about that, and have no idea how the northern-most rows did.  Oh well! :D

Potato harvest in yard begun -- the west part of the south bed = "AC Chaleur" has beautiful big potatoes!

Some are smaller, but overall I'm very happy with the size!

One was HUGE but had a sizeable hole drilled into the middle of it by some critter, and it had some rotting with various critters nibbling at it, so obviously tossed that one.

GA: Harvested more potatoes: ____ pounds (still a good amount of potato bed I haven't dug up yet)

So far that's ___ pounds from the GA potatoes.

GA: Harvested first potatoes; will harvest bit by bit to eat, leaving most in ground until end of season

The GA potatoes have all died!  Whereas the ones in the yard are very green and healthy-looking.  Not sure if the difference is the variety, the amount of sun, disease or lack thereof, etc.

Anyway, dug up a bit of both GA patches.  The SW patch that had the Colorado potato beetles had a bit of a scrawny harvest, whereas the NE  patch that was covered from day one and didn't have CPBs had bigger potatoes.  But the difference could also be the variety, who knows.

Potato leaves curling up!?

Uh oh -- some of the leaves in the yard's south potato patch are curling upward and not looking great.  I'm just going to "leave" it be and see what happens.

Potatoes starting to show yellowing of lower leaves

Wow, right on par with when I started noticing it last year (June 17th 2023).  Last year the yellowing took over and killed the plants, but still got a very decent harvest.

So far it's more advanced on the north patch, but it's starting in the south patch too.

(Haven't noticed it at GA yet.)

GA: Here's what's tulled/"tulled": All of the squash, watermelon, cantalope, potatoes, leeks, cucumbers, most of the onions

I will use "tulle" loosely, to refer to any of the various netting I have, which now includes not only tulle but also shear curtains from the thfit store, and Proteknet from William Dam Seeds (the piece I bought was 14' by 25').

Of course, eventually the squash and cucumbers will need to be untulled -- goodness help me when that terrifying day comes!!!

GA: OMG -- INSECTS ON DAY 1! Colorado Potato Beetle, and Three Lined Potato Beetle! Adults and eggs! On potatoes and ground cherries!

OMG!  Within like 30 minutes of transplanting the ground cherries, there were adults on them!  Some of them mating, no less!

AND -- fortunately I happened to notice bright orange eggs on one of the potato patches -- and saw several adult Colorado Potato Beetles.  Removed the eggs that I could find.

Here's a good page about CPBs, with suggestions for how to deal with them:  https://wholefedhomestead.com/organic-potato-bug-control-get-rid-of-potato-beetles-naturally/

And this article mentions some varieties that are resistant:  https://www.planetnatural.com/pest-problem-solver/garden-pests/colorado-potato-beetle-control/ -- "Yukon Gold, Russet Burbank, Caribe, and Norland, which are specifically designed to be less vulnerable to the beetle’s attacks"

I predict that a few months from now, I will look back and see that this was the day I realized that not drought, not weeds, not theft, not vandalism, not disease, but INSECTS will be far and away the biggest pressure at the allotment.

A: Potatoes bed 1 planted

The SE potato bed is planted.

West part is fridge potatoes -- mostly white, some red.  (All standard-size.)  They had grown inches-long "leaves" in the fridge.

East part is three Kennebec (the rest of the Kennebecs are in the backyard), and all of the Cal Whites.

For each, into its planting hole I put between 1/2 and 1 Tbsp each of azomite, mrp, kelp, and yes alfalfa too.

Cut up the bigger gaga potatoes

^^^

Potatoes planted in yard -- with an experiment

Today I planted out 12 x Kennebec (north of the broccolis) and 12 x AC Chaleur (south of the broccolis) in the central bed.  A few days ago (on May 4th) I had cut some in half, and they look to be sealed over now.

In each potato hole, I added 1 Tbsp kelp, 1/2 Tbsp azomite, 1/2 Tbsp mrp, and ~1/2 tsp of myke.

The experiment is that in each type's northerm-most row, I added 1 Tbsp alfalfa (in addition to the above amendments).

It will be interesting to see if any difference in the ones that have vs. don't have alfalfa.  Last year (2023) I didn't add any alfalfa to the potatoes, and they did well enough.

Potatoes for yard have been cut

In the yard I'll grow these varieties:

- Kennebec

- AC Chaleur

I chose those randomly from among the many potato varieties I bought at Ritchie's last week.

A few of those two kinds are still left over so will go to gaga.

I cut most of them in half, placed on cardboard, cut side up, will let them scab over before planting later this week.

First two pots of potatoes harvested! Decent yield, much better than last year

Wow!  Much better yield than last year!

Pot 1 (the first one to die off, had blight):  Nice-sized black pot. Had 3 x grocery store white potatoes.  Yield = 2 pounds.

Pot 2 (the second one to die off, had blight:  Nice-sized black pot. Had 3 x grocery store white potatoes.  Yield = 2 pounds, 9 ounces.

Way better than last year, when the same pots were giving like 0.5 to 0.75 pounds per pot.

Some of the potatoes in the bottom third of pot 1 were all mushy / not much left of them -- I tossed those obviously.  I think it may have been from poor drainage.  Pot 2 didn't seem to have that though.

Quite a few more potato plants still to be harvested from other pots and the ground (and the allotment)...

Potato blight update: Progressing slowly but surely, but slower than last year

At least I'm pretty sure it's a slower progression than last year.  It just seems like by this time last year a lot of the leaves had fallen off.  Granted, this year a new thing is wrong too, which is the curled leaves on a lot of them.

Planted 2 potatoes where removed 2 low-producing broccolis

The two broccoli in the northwest corner continue to not do much -- has been a piddly harvest from those two.  So, today I chopped them down (left roots intact), and planted the last two "Chieftain" seed potatoes from Ritchie's.