Help from the Potato King of Pamplin

Well, it's official: the watermelon bed in the vegetable garden is now officially the potato bed. After two years of disappointing watermelons and last year's success with the sweet potato crop (beginner's luck I am sure), we decided to grow more root vegetables and stop growing melons and squash. Between the swarms of hungry squash beetles laying their eggs and devouring the plants, the heat and the drought, I'd rather spring for a few bucks worth of zucchini at the Farmer's Market in Farmville (yes there really is such a town, and I live near it) than struggle again with my crops.

When it came time to plant potatoes, John and I visited our neighbors M and J. I have nicknamed M the Potato King of Pamplin, which makes him blush and makes J, his wife, laugh.  But what else would you call a man who created a huge root cellar in his basement to hold basket after basket of gorgeous Yukon Gold potatoes?

I don't know how many potatoes M plants each spring, but he gathered hundreds of pounds of potatoes in the fall.  When we stopped by for a visit a few weeks ago, I asked Mfor advice on planting potatoes. I'd bought a bag of Russet seed potatoes at the garden center but M quickly ran down to his basement and returned with a bag of his very own Yukon Gold seed potatoes and a bag of sulfur for us.  Sulfur, he said, would keep the bugs away.  He showed us how to dip the seed potatoes into the sulfur bag,  "like Shake n'Bake" he said,  and told us the proper way to plant potatoes.

We got the potatoes into the ground last weekend.  Half of the bed contains M's gorgeous little Yukon Gold spuds, grown only a few miles from here, and the other half has the pieces of the Russet seed potatoes.

According to the Potato King, there's really not much else we need to do except hill the potatoes or push some soil up over them once they sprout.  Cover them if we anticipate a freeze, he said, or the freeze might kill the new green growth.

Mother Earth News has some good information on planting potatoes, if you are interested.

So far, so good. Our plan to transform the vegetable garden by growing what we have learned does well out there - root crops, greens and beans primarily - is underway.  The onions are growing by leaps and bounds, and the garlic shoots M and J gave us have taken root. Beets are up to two leaves and looking happy and healthy.  Rain and showers over the next several days should water everything in nicely, and hopefully I will share pictures of the REAL potatoes soon! (today's images are thanks to Morguefile.com)

And thank you to the M team for your constant generosity of time, spirit and gardening stuff!