Potato Questions
When is it all happening?
I hope that everyone’s potato barrels are doing well. The drought and the heat waves were all challenging times, but hopefully everyone has pulled through. We are now coming up on harvest time. We will be collecting the Potatoes on Wednesday, October 03, 2012 from 9am-4pm, hopefully this will allow everyone to come drop off their potatoes as we need them all on that one day. However, we would really like everyone to try to come between 1-3pm when we will be having the big party to celebrate the event.
How do I harvest my barrel?
This is the question of the day. To be completely honest, I am not sure, as this is a pilot year, we will just have to see. I will be filming as I harvest my potato barrel and will put the result on the blog a week before harvest, if you would like an idea of how to get started.
Are your potatoes dying?
You will notice that possibly in the end of August, but more likely by mid- September you potato plants will yellow and eventually die. This is fine, they are meant to die back before harvesting if at all possible. Once the plant is dead simply stop watering your barrel and wait for October 3rd.
I didn`t Plant Potatoes:
I have had a lot of people tell me they would like to donate fresh food to the food bank, but did not have a chance to take part in this project when it began. I have been suggesting that if this is the case, feel free to buy potatoes from our local farmers at the farmer’s markets in town and donate those to the project. I am told by the Food Bank that it is not possible to have too many potatoes to use. Please feel free to pass on this information to the community!
1 Comment
This is such a busy time of year that we decided today (Sept. 16) would be the best time and the perfect weather for harvesting our potatoes. Being so excited to see what we had (not only the kids, but myself as well), we didn’t research on the internet until after the fact and found out we should have waited until flowers were growing on the plants before harvesting, but notnetheless, we got potatoes!!! We had 6 or 7 main plants and got 11 medium sized potatoes plus lots of little wee ones. I don’t know how much they would have grown if we had waited until the end of Sept. to harvest, but we’re so happy we got potatoes. The wee ones were too small to donate, so we boiled a few and they are sooooo delicious. We’re going to do this again next year. Good luck everyone!