Potato Harvest: Better Late Than Never

I have had so many little projects to do lately that I have been putting some things off for longer than I would have liked.  Harvesting my potatoes was one of those things.  They have been patiently waiting in the ground for months.  Luckily for me they keep pretty well in the dirt as long as I can keep the chickens out of the bed.  I have had to cover the bed with a sheet of plastic if I let the chickens out or they will scratch up and peck holes in any potatoes that they find.  As I have been digging them out I have come to discover that I am also feeding a healthy slug population under the cover of the plastic sheet.  I decided it was time to save what I had left in the bed and get those taters out of the dirt.

Digging them out is a slow process for me because I try my best not to damage any as I go.  There will always be a few that get stabbed with the potato fork and those get put into the "use first" bowl.  These ones live on my kitchen table and I pick a few out the bowl as I need them for a meal.  I have also been trying to keep the tiny spuds in this bowl because they don't keep as well as the full sized potatoes and I can boil them up by the handful as new potatoes.  All the potatoes that are larger and unblemished go into the storage box.  These will live in a cool dark closet in my back room for the winter.  After I eat my way through the "use first" bowl I will start working on the stored potatoes in the box.  If there are any left in the box by spring they will likely get replanted in the garden to grow more potatoes for next year.

This box is about half full with the three varieties of potatoes that I grew this year.  The Purple Viking and Red Chieftain potatoes did the best this year, while the Yukon Gold only produced a handful of potatoes from what I planted.  All of the potatoes were "free"  to me this year since I planted what was left of last year's crop this spring.  I had plenty of them left over so I didn't need to spend any money on seed potatoes this year.  Between volunteer potatoes that came up in last years bed and these free potatoes I haven't had to spend a penny on potatoes since the spring of 2016.  If I am lucky I will continue this trend and have fresh homegrown potatoes for years to come.