Hi, I’m Erin and this is Our Wyoming Life
Potatoes are a humble vegetable.
They are requirement of a starchy side dish on the dinner plate.
They can be pretty boring.
But when fresh from the garden, they can be transformed into something magical.
Add some spicy or sweet garden onions to the humble potato and now we’re getting somewhere.
In life sometimes simple is best and the garden reminds us that even a boring potato can taste
better when home grown.
I love home grown potatoes.
They are tender and buttery.
I always grow 2 rows of them.
One row of Yukon gold and one row of Red Pontiac.
They both make excellent new potatoes and when picked and eaten fresh they have thin
skins and a tender texture.
Before we plant we have to get the garden ready.
Manure needs added.
Mike uses the tractor to make quick work of this job.
Well aged manure gets added to the outdoor gardens every two years.
After the manure is spread on the garden the international tractor gets used to till the
garden and work in the manure.
Every year potatoes are the first crop that gets planted outside.
The garden is long and I swear it’s impossible to plant a straight row without a string.
This year potatoes will go right in the center of the garden.
It’s important to rotate where your potatoes grow every year to prevent disease.
It’s been 3 years since potatoes have been grown in the middle.
After the string is up I can start digging holes.
I use a garden stake to evenly space the potatoes.
I dig a 6 inch hole or so for each potato.
Then it’s time to get the potatoes ready.
Seed potatoes have been purchased from the local feed store.
They need to be cut so that each hole can be filled.
The only requirement when dividing seed potatoes is that each section has an eye.
The eye is where the new potato plant will grow from.
Potato chunks get placed in each hole and then before they are buried we make sure that
the eyes are facing upward.
In a few weeks the leaves will emerge from and the ground.
These plants will get almost 2 foot tall, they will bloom pretty little purple flowers
and then a few weeks after they are done blooming potatoes will be able to be harvested.
Onions always go next to the potatoes.
Even though crops get rotated every year is seems certain things just go next to each
other.
For the past several years onion plants have been ordered from Dixondale Farms.
The plants get shipped to me sometime around the first part of May and they always produce
huge beautiful onions.
This year we are growing Walla Walla, Ringmaster White, Redwing and Lancelot Leeks.
The onions need to be planted in a trench.
A good old garden hoe is the tool for the job.
The onions get unbundled and placed in the trench.
They get planted pretty close together.
We will thin them as they grow.
By the end of the season we will have softball size onions.
All the different varieties of onions get planted the same way.
Once place in the trench we push the dirt back on them.
Fried potatoes and onions from the garden are a thing of beauty.
Crispy on the outside and tender on the inside, they are one of our favorite summer side dishes.
New potatoes fresh from the garden are so different from a potato that has been placed
in storage.
I highly recommend digging your potatoes throughout the season so that you can enjoy their deliciousness.
If you have never ordered onion plants from Dixondale Farms I would definitely steer you
to them for your next season.
I was never able to grow big onions until I started ordering from Dixondale farms.
The plants always arrive healthy and produce consistently large, tasty onions for me year
after year.
As the potatoes and the leeks grow they will be hilled.
That is a simple process that just requires piling the dirt from the row around the plant.
This helps the leeks grow big and tall and stay white and it will help the potatoes produce
more.
It also helps avoid sunburn on the potatoes that happens when they poke through the soil.
A sunburnt potato will have a green skin.
It’s still edible it just needs to be peeled to remove all the green color.
In all honesty hilling potatoes doesn’t always happen around here.
I get busy and don’t get around to it.
If you don’t hill your potatoes it’s not the end of the world.
They will grow just fine without hilling.
I swear, as I do every year, that I will hill the potatoes.
And then we will have so many potatoes we won’t be able to give them away!!
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Thanks for joining me in Our Wyoming Life.