1st time planting potatoes

[sweetiepie]

Last year, I put aside a certain amount of space I wanted to fill with potatoes. I cut up my potatoes and found I still had more space to use up. I was in a hurry and just filled the rest of the space up with whole potatoes. I didn't seem to notice much of a difference. Could of been the kind of potato, I think the extra was Bintje. I love that potato. I usually plant four and it is my favorite.

I believe, from my experience, that a onion left over from the year before that starts to sprout will bolt and give you lots of seeds for the next year but not much of a bulb.

You could leave the turnips and collect seeds for next year form them.

[Taiji]

I usually choose small seed potatoes to plant and mine usually have only a couple of eyes anyway.

Sigh, I planted my seed potatoes a month ago about, and they were doing so well, up about a foot, bushy, healthy, I was so proud... then...a few nights ago, zapped by frost. Since then, zapped a couple more times worse! Should have thrown a sheet over them, but didn't think it was going to get that cold!

Heartbreaking, but, that happened to me in the past and it seems like they recover from it, hope they do this time. It may still frost again til mid May, who knows?

[Taiji]

This thread reminds me of the way Ruth Stout used to plant potatoes, just lifted up the mulch and put them under there. Said she had great potatoes. She wrote books on mulching, gardening without work, etc. Probably lots of gardeners here remember her.

[rainbowgardener]

Yup, definitely love Ruth Stout's books and video, which are hard to find these days.

Potatoes are pretty tough and cold hardy plants, I imagine they will recover fine.