Today, I decided it was time to harvest our first ever potatoes!
Really, we wanted to let the potato plants grow for a while longer but while I was rearranging all the plants to try to get them into the fall sunshine, I noticed some damage to the potato plants.
The damage was pretty bad and I figured it was better to harvest what we had, than to possibly lose all the potatoes if the plants can not longer get nourishment.
We had 2 plants that we grew from russet potatoes that had sprouted in our pantry. I planted them in late May or early June and followed the advice friends, gardening shows and internet research to grow them.
After all the time they have been growing, about 4 months, we were hoping we for a few potatoes… Really, I was hoping for at least 4 potatoes. Enough to make a nice pot of mashed potatoes…
What we got was 2 funny shaped little potatoes! Lol
They are big enough to eat, so that’s all that matters! There were also a few very tiny potatoes about the size of half a peanut shell, as you could see in the video, but it’s already been about 4 months so I really don’t think they would have grown any bigger, even if we could have left them in the dirt.
Growing potatoes was really a fun experiment! With the other vegetables and flowers we can see, touch and count the literal “fruits of our labors” but with the potatoes, it’s a complete surprise! There is no way of knowing how many potatoes are hiding down in the soil, quietly growing and expanding.
This winter I plan to do more research on potato growing and possibly even buy some seed potatoes and then next year, maybe we’ll get more than 2 funny little potatoes!
Update!
We decided to oven bake the potatoes and they were absolutely the best baked potatoes I have ever had!