Welcome back to my blog. It's been almost a month since my last post. I have been busy working in my garden and haven't had much time to post. I've also been working on other tasks including mowing, opening the pool and tending to the perennial flower beds. The only planting post i have written to date was about the snow peas.
As far as the weather goes, not much has changed in the last month. The wet pattern persists, and even though I have gotten the garden planted, it has been a challenge for sure. As I write this today the garden is completely saturated with water lying in the garden paths.
I will write multiple posts to show my planting process and also current photos to show garden progress.
In this post i will focus on potatoes. I originally planted them on May 25th. This year I planted just one variety, Yukon Gold. This a great variety that works well for boiling, baking, and in potato salad. They also store very well.
Planting potatoes is a fairly simple process, the potato sets are normally available in the Spring at your local garden store. The first step is to cut the seed potatoes into pieces that each have at least two "eyes" or sprouts.
The next step is to make trenches about 6 inches deep and 24 to 36 inches apart.
The sets are then placed in the trenches about 12 to 18 inches apart. I then cover up the sets with a few inches of soil, but don't fill in the trenches completely.
The reason for not filling the trenches completely is to promote sprouting of the sets, Once they have sprouted and are 6 inches or so tall, I then "hill" the potatoes. This is simply mounding the soil around the plants tp provide adequate soil for the potatoes to develop, without being exposed above ground, which will turn them green.
Potato Update
Due to the extreme wet weather over he last month, only about 40% of the potatoes sprouted. I replanted them about 2 weeks ago, and still only about half overall have come up. I will try one more time with the sets that I have left to replant. I will keep you updated.
The plants that are growing are looking pretty healthy, so as long as the summer weather improves, I should get a decent crop,
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