Zone 5b Garden Update For The Week – 10/4/2021
Harvesting Potatoes Isn’t A Spec-Tator Sport
After all the green leaves turn brown and die on the potato plant, it’s time to harvest. Generally speaking, you will need to carefully dig for your potatoes if you planted and backfilled with dirt. Under those circumstances, I recommend grabbing a pair of gloves, a small shovel, a bucket, and a towel. How do you harvest freshly grown potatoes from the garden? Keep reading to find out!
It is imperative that as you dig the potatoes up, you place them in the bucket and cover them with a towel to minimize the amount of light they get. Exposure to light will turn the potatoes green, and make them non-edible.
How To Harvest Potatoes In The Garden
You will want to use the shovel carefully and lightly. For me, it’s easiest to use the shovel to loosen the dirt around the potatoes, and then use my hands to uncover the potatoes, and the shovel again once I see the potatoes.
Potatoes may be a single potato, attached to the root, or multiple separated potatoes. The number of potatoes you will harvest is not an exact science and adds to the fun of potatoes. When you see the greenery dying off, stop watering, and harvest about 2 weeks later.
How To Plant Potatoes In The Garden
If I dig up a potato that is green, or too small to be eaten, I will use that as a seed potato. Simply place back into the ground or throw it away.
When the time comes to plant potatoes, it could not be simpler. As a gardener’s choice – either wait until the potato “sprouts” or place it in the ground as is. Knowing the first freeze could be any day now, I chose to plant the freshly harvested potatoes.
Potatoes can be planted about 4 per square foot. As the greenery grows, you will need to backfill it with dirt or straw. Simply mound dirt or straw around the greenery. leaving about 4″ of greenery uncovered. The backfill/mounding will produce more.
Should I Use Dirt Or Straw For My Potatoes?
The choice to use dirt or straw for growing taters is ultimately up to the gardener. Being that this was my first time growing tubers, I chose dirt. Had I known the difficulties that come with harvesting from dirt, I would have chosen straw.
Straw allows you to easily reach in and pull out a potato – no digging needed. Next year I will be backfilling with straw.
Finally, I wanted to mention that the potatoes I planted are known as the Masquerade variety. These have a beautiful yellow inside with light brown and purple swirled skin. With a buttery flavor, these spuds are sure to impress.
This Week, The Temperature Was Getting A Little Warm, So I Took Off All My Cloves
Finally, the garlic I ordered months ago has come in – most places wait to ship garlic until the correct time for planting. Here in zone 5b, the correct time to plant is in October.
How To Plant Garlic In The Garden
First, you need to separate all the cloves from the bulb. Next, place each clove – pointed side up – in the dirt. Finally, cover with dirt, mulch if needed, and water.
When To Harvest Garlic From The Garden
Similarly to potatoes, the greenery of the garlic will start to die off – indicating to stop watering and harvest in about 2 weeks. Also, similar to spuds, you should dig slowly and purposefully for the garlic so as not to damage the garlic.
Every day I’m brusselin’
A few weeks ago I shared an update on my Brussels sprouts. Since then, they have grown slightly. It is difficult to see the growth in the image, but I have included the image from a week ago and this week’s image for comparison.
Below, the image on the left was taken on 9/27 and the one on the right was taken a week later 10/4.
Putting My Garden To Bed
As the first freeze fast approaches, I have started to put my bed to rest for winter. This season was great, and I have many ideas for 2022.
This will be my last garden update until I start prepping for the 2022 season sometime in the early spring / later winter. Zone 5b usually plants in mid-May outside, and I usually start seeds inside about 12 weeks before that.
While I won’t have garden updates to share during the winter, I will have gardening tips/tricks and recipes to share.
Until my next post, I hope you enjoy exploring previous garden updates.
