I’m sure I’ve mentioned before that potatoes may not be the best value for work input for a home grower.  High-quality organic potatoes from the market are quite inexpensive, and certainly a better pure cost value than our homegrown spuds. However, I have no doubt that planting two beds of potatoes every year is a good fit for my garden.

Potatoes are usually a very reliable crop.  I’ve got my planting scheme down, and I see the rotation of potato beds through the garden as an ideal way to break up the clayey soil I have to work with. Each harvest is like a double dig for the bed. The soil definitely gets thoroughly turned over.

I try to leave a lot of potatoes in the ground almost until hard frost.  They keep as well in the ground as anywhere, and once they are dug, they have to be stored.  We store them in the barn in a straw bale enclosure.  It’s not good to put them into this storage system when it is still warm outside.

This bucket of potatoes was less than a third of what I harvested from this bed.  It was just over 30 pounds, so I’m estimating the bed gave us about 100 pounds.  The bed I have yet to harvest is planted more intensively and I expect to get about 120 pounds from it.  We’ve been harvesting and eating potatoes since late July, so I don’t have to deal with them all at one time, but frost is approaching so I do have to get the rest of them out of the ground.

This particular bucket is not going into cold storage. I washed them and they are going into the kitchen larder for near-immediate consumption.

Newly Dug Potatoes