What happened to the Thread, growing winter potatoes?

[Gary350]

I looked for 30 minutes I give up. Where is it?

[applestar]

This one -- right?

Subject: What to do during the winter months...

I'm SO glad you posted that link. I immediately recognized the header design as the website where I saw an article on planting potatoes in the fall for spring harvest. I wrote about it and posted the link here ages ago and have mentioned it several times since then, always apologizing that I could not find the link again. Yep, there it was, and here it is

https://www.emmitsburg.net/gardens/artic ... potato.htm

I planted potatoes once in the fall just as an experiment because I have so much trouble with trying to grow potatoes in TN in spring. I cut my potatoes into pieces with about 2 or 3 eyes and let them dry 2 days. I set the cut pieces on the soil surface 12" apart in a 25' row. I shoveled soil from each side covering the potatoes with about 2" of soil. As the tops grew taller and taller I shoveled more soil from the sides to cover the plants until seed potatoes were covered with 8" of soil. I covered the hill with straw, tops barley poked through the straw when we had a early frost and early cold winter. The potatoes never grew any more tops all winter. Spring came I kept waiting for tops to grow but none grew. I planted tomatoes in April, mid May soil was warm enough to plant the rest of the garden and still potatoes were doing nothing. Potatoes were in my way of planting the garden so they needed to be gone. I was very surprised to find a good crop of potatoes just waiting to be dug up. I posted that on this forum about 10 years ago. I will remember to try this again next season.

At the moment I am doing nothing in the garden. I harvest kale for salad every day. Broccoli is just now starting to make heads. Lettuce and chard are 1" tall and been that way for several months. Peas, garlic, onion sets are looking good. Onion seed is not growing. Carrots are doing nothing either but I know they will when weather gets right. We had 1 night of 14 degree weather, and several nights of 17 degrees and 20 degrees. Last night was 50 degrees and going to be 70 today and 73 Christmas day. All the herbs are doing good, oregano, thyme, parsley. We are going to have 5 ripe garden tomatoes for Christmas dinner there were 5 green tomatoes in the refrigerator that are now setting on the counter top RED and RIPE.