The Great Florida Potato Harvest

I've been eyeing up my potato plants recently and wondering if it's time to pull them out and see if there are any potatoes buried below. I'll admit that I had no clue what you're supposed to do with potato plants when they appear ready. I wasn't sure if they are the kind of plants that you keep in the ground to grow more once you harvest from it (like a tomato) or the kind of plant that you pull out to eat (like a radish or a carrot). Annie's Granny told me that a couple of weeks after a potato plant blooms, you can start poking around for potatoes. Or, she said, you can wait until the plant matures and dies off and get all the potatoes then. Well my plants had definitely matured because they were yellowed and drooping. So the decision was made for me.


I got the boys and told them we were going to plunge our hands into the soil and see what we came up with. That little boy of mine was instantly disgusted and left, but that big boy of mine was game and liked the idea of getting his hands really dirty.


We started digging and surprisingly enough we found potatoes. Last time we planted potatoes (in our regular garden - before we switched to a SFG) none of them grew. Well actually one of them grew, but I mistook it for a weed and pulled it up. So you can imagine how surprised we were when we kept finding potatoes on the ends of our plants this time around! It was like reaching into a grab bag with your eyes closed… you'd poke around until you found something and grab hold and pull it out and viola! - a tatery gift!


I had two squares of the SFG dedicated to potatoes and was really hoping to get at least a pound or two of potatoes. But every time we dug our hands into the ground, we came up with more and more potatoes. It was strangely exciting and surprising! That's the thing about growing potatoes. You see these plants growing above the surface and you have no idea what's going on below the soil. It could be feast or famine - there's no telling. Of course, I expect famine and am overjoyed when something actually grows as it's supposed to.


At the end of the day we ended up with 10 1/2 pounds of potatoes. Not bad for only two squares in my raised bed! I'm sure if I'd have known what I was doing, I could have reaped a better harvest by pulling out some potatoes every few days after the plant bloomed, but as we all know it's guesswork for me and I can't complain about 10 1/2 pounds of unskilled taters.


Now I just have to find out how to store them so they last longer because we surely can't find a way to cook that many potatoes in a week! We're low on root cellars here in Florida and really low on cool, dark places, so for now they're just sitting in a big bowl on my countertop with a cloth napkin thrown on top.


I'm especially happy that I pulled these potatoes the day AFTER I purchased a 5-lb bag of potatoes at the grocery store. I'm also in search of some tater-friendly recipes where I can enjoy the true potatoey-essence of this harvest and not just mash them up and pour gravy on them. Any suggestions?

R.I.P. Poor Gracie

My kitchen has become a crime scene. It's a sad sight - not for the weak of heart. I awoke this morning to the shrieks of horror from my children. When I ran into the kitchen to see what they were screaming about, I saw the body. (Please do not read this post if crime scene pics bother you.)

Gracie - DOA - 0700 hours - 18 March 09.
Cause of Death: Unknown.



Her body was zipped up into a potato sack after the CSI's left and she was carted away before breakfast. The chalk outline will fade, but her memory will live on.

What does this say about my sweet potato husbandry skills? I started out with George and Gracie and now Gracie is snuffed out without providing me with one lousy stinking slip?

I knew things with Gracie weren't well when her water started to cloud several days ago and something resembling a tear trickled down her side.


I thought that I might have her in the water upside down since I really can't tell her arse from her head so I flipped her over in the hopes that it would revive her spirit.

It did not.

Sweet dreams, sweet potato. You will be missed.

George, on the other hand, is doing great. He even has a couple of little shoots protruding from his head. So we'll keep a stiff upper lip and focus our attention on our little widower with the hopes that he'll come through with some slips in the end.

Is my slip showing?

Meet George and Gracie. They're the sweet potatoes that live on top of my bread box in the kitchen. I desperately want to grow sweet potatoes in the garden but I can't find anywhere to buy a handful of slips for cheap. I've trolled the popular seed selling websites and they all want to sell them in bulk or are charging an arm and a leg for something I'll inevitably kill.


So I spoke with EG at Our Engineered Garden to find out how to start my own slips. I read that a slip is a single plant (with small roots) that is sprouted on the sweet potato root and then slipped off so that you may plant it in the garden to grow a sweet potato plant. EG said to stick some sweet potatoes in a glass jar and then when the tops sprout I can remove them and somehow plant them in the garden. Granted I am still not 100% sure what a slip looks like, but I gather that I'll recognize it once I grow one.

I'm convinced this will all make sense once George and Gracie begin to grow. They've been sitting on the bread box for over a week and have started to grow roots, which is promising. I assume at some point we'll have sproutage on the top of the potatoes and then it'll all make sense.

This isn't my first time growing a sweet potato. Back in my working days an entire group of us decided to grow sweet potato plants on our desks. Mine was a hermaphroditic sweet potato appropriately called Hermie. He was the only one that didn't grow. This should tell you a lot about my gardening skills. Every other cube rat grew a sweet potato plant. I ended up making a dunce cap out of a post-it note and putting it on Hermie's head so that it didn't look quite so bald compared to the other blossoming plants. We actually potato-napped a co-worker's wonderfully-blooming sweet potato plant and sent her daily ransom notes showing a gloved hand holding opened scissors on the plant. She ended up getting quite upset and we had to give her plant back. So I held on to Hermie until his dunce cap fell off and he went moldy.

Let's hope George and Gracie turn things around for me.