The Backyard Gardener: Simple, Easy, and Beautiful Gardening with Vegetables, Herbs, and Flowers by Kelly Orzel

Author:Kelly Orzel [Orzel, Kelly]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
ISBN: 9781493026586
Publisher: Lyons Press
Published: 2017-04-01T04:00:00+00:00

Potatoes (Solanum tuberosum)

Family: Solanaceae

Plant Type: Annual, zone 3–11

Light: Full sun

Soil: Loose, well-drained

Height × Width: 24–30ʺ × 24ʺ

pH: 5.0–6.5

Sow: 2–4ʺ deep, 2 weeks before last frost

Succession: Early-, mid-, and late-season varieties

Days to germination: n/a

Days to maturity: 90–110 days (early), 100–120 days (mid), 110–140 days (late)

Water: Moist, not waterlogged Feed: High, avoid high nitrogen

Friends: Beans, brassicas, corn, eggplant, and marigolds

Foes: Cucumber, fennel, kohlrabi, pumpkin, squash, sunflower, and turnip

In the mood for a treasure hunt? Try growing potatoes, one of the most productive—and easiest—crops to grow. While you can start them from seed, it’s significantly quicker to use seed potatoes. Catalogs offer an expanded selection of seed spuds. From the thumb-sized, skinny fingerlings to medium and large, rounded potatoes available with blue, purple, red, white, and yellow skins and flesh, you’ll be surprised at the wide array of choices of shapes and colors. Use the whole seed potato or cut into smaller pieces—but they have to have at least two eyes, or sprouts, and enough flesh to feed the growing potato until the root system has developed. Some gardeners say they should weigh two ounces, but as I don’t often have a scale handy, I just make sure that none of my cut seed potatoes are smaller than one-and-one-half to two inches. To avoid rot and disease, allow cut potatoes to “heal” in the sun or in a cool, dry spot before planting unless the soil is warm, then plant away! If your spuds haven’t grown eyes yet, they need to be chitted. Simply lay them out indoors on a bright windowsill and leave them for a week at room temperature till the sprouts are one inch long. Sometimes I set them in an old egg carton until they sprout. Don’t let the shoots get too leggy, and be careful not to damage them when planting.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.