I harvested the first crop of the seed potatoes the other day that I ordered online last fall. It’s hard to tell the scale by looking at this picture, but it’s a picture of little potatoes, making up a pile about the size of a dinner plate. I emptied this potato tub because all the greenery had died back, and was disappointed to find a very small crop, smaller, pound for pound, than the original seed potatoes I planted. This variety is called La Ratte and they are, or should I say were, fingerling potatoes. This batch was, for the time and space allotted, a pitifully small crop. I wonder where I went wrong with this batch. Not enough water, wrong planting time? Who knows? Disappointing, because my last crop of regular red potatoes I bought at the store gave me a great crop.
Spudlets
All was not lost, though. I roasted the potatoes with chopped-up fennel bulb (also from the garden) and it was a delicious treat with the fish we had for dinner!
Tagged as:
fingerling potatoes,
La Ratte fingerlings,
potatoes
What is a bulb? Never gave it much thought until the subject came up in Flower Show Judge school.
1. True Bulbs – The true bulb has five major parts. It contains the basal plate (bottom of bulb from which roots grow), fleshy scales (primary storage tissue), tunic (skin-like covering that protects the fleshy scales), the shoot (consisting of developing flower and leaf buds), and lateral buds (develop into bulblets or offsets). There are two different kinds of true bulbs:
– Tunicate: bulbs shred or peel off layers (tunicate layers) – daffodils, onions
– Scaly: individual toes that sprout and can be planted individually – garlic is a great example of this.
2. Stem Tuber – made up of nodes and internodes, does not have a basal plate and does not have a protective tunic covereing. Buds appear all over the surface of a tuber, then develop into stems and roots. Irish potatoes are a perfect example of this, as are anemones and oxalis.
3. Tuberous Roots – actually store nutrients in their roots instead of enlarged stem. Buds develop at the top of the root. Examples of tuberous roots include sweet potato and dahlias.
4. Rhizome – grows horizontally under ground. Lots of grasses develop this way, as well as iris. Rhizomes are infamous for being invasive and spreading like wildfire.
5. Corm – is a compressed bulb, very similar to true bulbs in that they have a basal plate and a protective tunic skin, but the major difference is that there are no visible storage rings if you cut it in half. Examples are watsonia and gladiolus.
Alright, now plant those summer bulbs!
Tagged as:
bulbs,
daffocils,
dahlias,
potatoes
So, the potatoes I ordered finally arrived. I’m not sure what I was expecting but they look like….well, potatoes. It was a little anticlimatic when I opened the box, because I spent about $35.00 for this little pile, which I was happy to do, but I think I’m just having a problem with having spent [...]
Tagged as:
chitting,
Planting,
potatoes,
vegetables
I have been waiting for the sack of little red potatoes I put outside in a protected shady spot to sprout. I put them out almost two months ago and unlike the potatoes in my cupboard, this batch didn’t sprout right away. Go figure. Anyway, they finally sprouted so it was time to plant. I [...]
Tagged as:
potatoes
All hail the mighty potato! I had my first crop of potatoes (July 17 post) and it’s time to plant more so why not on National Potato Day. What is National Potato Day, you ask? I went to Google to see what I could find but didn’t find an answer to that question. What I [...]
Tagged as:
potatoes,
vegetables
