Life took over a bit and so we are a week or so late in getting these little guys in the ground.
Ultimately its OK though because part of the instructions said that taking the extra time to sprout in the house will actually help speed up the process when the potatoes do get planed. While we were busy with the day jobs, I had my potatoes in a brown bag with an apple helping the sprouting process. The gasses that the apple puts off helps the potatoes sprout faster. It worked and all my little potatoes had sprouts AND leaves!!
It has also been pretty cold the past few weeks so I had not been in much of a hurry to get them in the cold dirt. Ultimately though if I never get them in the ground, they will never grow and this was the first weekend were able to.
In our research the type of potato used in potato boxes is the difference between getting 5 potatoes and 50 potatoes. For a potato box you must use a long season type. For our area (Salt Lake City) all that you can find in the nursery are the short or mid season variety's. We had to order our potato seeds in and chose to use Yellow Finn Potatoes due to their long season and the promise of a buttery potato. You can find these at a number of online retailers but I ordered mine
here.
Not that it needs to fully be explained, but here are our steps for planting.
We laid down a layer of organic dirt and straw as a little bed for the potatoes like so:
Here they are all laid out
Then we (Bo) put about 2-3 inches of layered dirt, organic compost and straw over them
Here is the compost we used. It was about 8.00 from Home Depot
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| Cute action shot...... right? |
After a quick water they were ready for the final inspection ...... from Trigger
I also have a few potatoes that I am going to plant traditionally to see the comparison.
I am crossing my fingers we will get some growth soon.
Due to the cold and the sun/clouds not behaving we haven't seen much growth yet elsewhere in the garden so cross your fingers with me!
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