The Potato Bed

    The potatoes we planted a few weeks ago, have been growing pretty good this year so far. The warm sunny days and cool nights we've been having  this spring, have really kicked off this year's growing season.

   One of the important things to do when growing potatoes is mounding the plants when they get a certain height. The potatoes are planted about three feet apart, and when the plants which about a foot or so high you mound them. You do this by digging a trench between the rows and piling up the dirt around the plant.

   The reason you do this is to make the plant grow more potatoes. What happens is the plant recognizes the dirt and will send out more tubers to eventually grow into potatoes. The plant will also grow taller because of this.  We have ten rows with about 10 plants in each, so hopefully the potato crop should be very plentifully this year.
   Potatoes are a great plant for new garden beds, because you have to dig up the ground to plant them, then dig up the ground to mound them, and dig up the ground to find the buried treasure ( aka potatoes ). The kids have a blast with the last one. When you do all that digging you're aerating the soil and allowing nutrients to mix in. Potatoes are also a great plant for beginner gardeners. They are a very hardy plant, grow great in cooler regions, and can live through small droughts. In case you forget to water them form time to time. The only real problem you might have with them is the Colorado potato beetle.

   The Colorado potato beetle lives all over America, not just Colorado. These little flying beetles love potato plants, along with a couple other plants in your garden. The adults will eat the leaves, mate, then lay there eggs on the backside of the leaves. Once the eggs hatch, the larvae, which look like tiny slugs, will devour the entire plant. They also cover themselves in their own poop so that no bird or animal will eat them. We have tried using a insecticide spray on the plant, but found it not to be very effective due to the fact that the rain would wash it off and the beetles would be right back. I'm trying a new method this year, which is a little more organic. I use a mason jar filled with soapy water and try to knock the beetles into the jar or just grab them and throw them in. The beetles tend to have a fight or flight reaction so knocking them into the jar is pretty easy. I also check underneath the leaves for eggs and either wipe them off or tear the leaf off and feed it to the chickens. 

  Another method we're trying for planting potatoes is called a Irish potato barrel. It's not a barrel or from Ireland at all. What you do is take a tire and put it flat on the ground. Then put the potato seedling in the tire on the ground, and fill it up half way with dirt. Once the plants gets about a foot tall you fill up the tire completely. Then when the plant is again a foot tall you stack another tire on top of the other tire and fill it with dirt. You keep repeating the process until you run out of tires, or get tired of stacking tires. It look kind of ghetto, but we're going to give it a try.

    Some facts about Maine and potatoes.

• According to the USDA and the National Agricultural Statistics Service, potatoes accounted for 24 percent of Maine’s total agricultural cash receipts in 2009, the highest percentage.
• There were over 6,000 farmers devoted to raising potatoes in Aroostook County, Maine around 1930-1940.
• In the middle of the twentieth century, Maine produced more potatoes than any other state in the nation. Today, potatoes continue to be a critical part of the state's economy, with the fertile soil of Aroostook County being the largest growing region.
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  Schools in Aroostook County still take a three week long "harvest break" in late September to pick the potatoes, just like they did 70 years ago.

      And you thought living in California was exciting.