Friday afternoon and Saturday morning were spent planting potatoes, one of the more labor-intensive crops in the garden.
right after lunch we filled a wagon with a load of finished compost from the pile in the barnyard. this rich black soil consists mostly of animal dung - combination of cow, chicken, and sheep - and is at five to seven years old no longer actively decomposing, which means all its nutrients and minerals are available to the plant.
farm boss Josh and Jesse (a perennial intern for the past eight years and MD who will be spending her summer vacation here at the farm) went through the intended potato patch with the cultivator. we hand picked out all the weeds that were left behind, then dug four trenches about eight inches deep and a foot and a half apart and stretching the length of the field. the potatoes we wanted to plant were being kept in the root cellar, which was a nice cool place to take a break after all that digging in the glorious hot sunshine. this year we're growing four varieties: Yukon Gold, Purple Viking, German Butterball, and Red Chieftain. we took the twenty kilo sacks of sprouted potatoes and walked the length of the trenches, dropping a spud every foot or so. then it was back to the wagon for a few barrows full of compost, spreading a shovelfull over each mother potato down the trench before burying them all nice and deep.
the mother potato will give rise to both the plant we see above ground, and the starchy deliciousness that will form below. I discovered last season that harvesting tubers is one of my favorite garden tasks: it's like digging for buried treasure that you can boil, mash, fry, or stick in a stew. when you dig up the root system of the plant to get to the potatoes, you can harvest all of them except the mother. she will have been devoured by the surrounding potatoes and the plant, and by season's end will be nothing but a rotten husk.
so, happy Mothers' Day!
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