I love digging potatoes. We watch throughout spring as the tops grow, flower, and eventually start to die back. We hill them twice, mounding soil up around the base of the plant to keep the
young potatoes covered and in the dark. What will we find underground? Will it be a good year for potatoes? We don’t really know until we dig. This year I am pleased with the potato harvest thus far. We are averaging around 10 pounds of potatoes for each pound we planted. For us, that is a decent yield. The south is not potato growing country and we don’t expect the kinds of yields one might get in Maine or Minnesota or Idaho. When sweet potato time rolls around, however, we can expect about double the weight in tubers out of the same planted area.
Digging the potatoes is even more fun than usual this year because we get to use our single row potato digger! We got it last year in time for sweet potatoes, but too late to dig regular potatoes. Since it is a new tool, we are still fine tuning – the depth, the pitch of the ramp, the speed of the belt and the speed of the tractor are all variables. Even if we haven’t perfected it yet, the single row digger is already making potato harvest a breeze.
Meet Our Farm Workers: Melea
This is Melea’s second season working at Tubby Creek Farm. You have Melea to thank for a lot of what is in the share this week. She single-handedly planted all the carrots (and a boat load of other spring crops) back in March. Together she and I planted the onions and potatoes. If you’ve been to see us at the Cooper Young Community Farmers Market, you may have met Melea working the booth. When she’s not at the farm she makes art and cares for a plethora of rescue and foster cats and kittens. She also has a special fondness for opossums, although as far as I know she isn’t housing any.
Small Share
- Carrots
- Onions
- Fingerling potatoes
- Cucumber
- Summer Squash
- Basil
Full Share
- Carrots
- Onions
- Fingerling potatoes
- Cucumber
- Summer Squash
- Cabbage
- Beets
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