Granny's Garden School

It is always a winner for the kids to dig up potatoes in the fall. These days we use seed potatoes donated by a potato farm but the first few years we used plain old potatoes from the supermarket. We repeatedly hear how supermarket potatoes are treated to prevent them from sprouting but that has not been my experience. Here I am speaking of red or white, not sweet potatoes. We plant them mid March and harvest late September because it fits our schedule but you can plant .

A few days before you plan to plant, cut the potatoes into pieces with 1-2 "eyes" on each piece. (The potato "eyes" are in the the little indention's.) This is where the buds will emerge.

Why are potatoes planted in "hills?"

Planting potatoes Trash Can Potatoes

Lay the pieces on a tray in a single layer with cut sides facing up, and let them air dry. This will help to prevent the pieces from rotting. Plant the potato pieces 3-4" below the surface. Do mark the area so summer helpers will know where they are planted.

When you harvest them in the fall, use a garden fork. Stick it in the ground about a foot away from the plant and press the handle toward the ground so the prongs lift up. Repeat all around the plant removing the potatoes as you go. Leave a few potatoes deep in the ground and you will be rewarded early next spring with a some volunteer plants.

Irish Potato Famine In 1845, the peasants of Ireland were almost totally dependent on the potato as a source of food because this crop produced more food per acre than wheat and could also be sold as a source of income. The type of potato most favored was the "Aran Banner," a large variety. Unfortunately, this particular strain was highly susceptive to the fungus, Phytophthora infestans, commonly known as blight, which had spread from North America to Europe. The blight destroyed the potato crop of 1845. This was not the first time the potato crop had failed but in the past it would happen on one or another part of the country. This was the first time the crop failed across the county. The potato crop in Ireland had never failed for two consecutive years. Everyone was counting on the next harvest to be blight-free. But the blight was here to stay and three of the following four years would be potato crop disasters, with catastrophic consequences for Ireland. More than a million people died from starvation during the famine.

One lesson we can learn from the Irish potato famine is the importance of diversity in the food crops we grow. If the Irish farmers had been growing many different varieties of potatoes, the impact of the blight would not have been so devastating. It would have been even better if they had been growing a variety of food crops besides potatoes.

Did you know that historically, humans utilized more than 7,000 plant species to meet their basic food needs. Today, due to the limitations of modern large-scale, mechanized farming, only 150 plant species are under cultivation, and the majority of humans live on only 12 plant species, according to research by the Food and Agriculture Organization.

Preparing the potatoes for planting:
Any potato will do. Cut potatoes into pieces with at least one "eye" on each piece. Spread the cut potatoes, cut side up in a single layer on a tray and allow to air dry. Allowing the cut portions of the potatoes to dry a bit before planting will help to prevent them from rotting before roots and plants can develop. You can do this up to a week ahead of planting. Potatoes should be planted about 6" deep with the cut side down..

We are planting the potatoes outside of the class gardens, but right next to the boxes.

You can use the larger shovels to dig the holes to plant the potatoes but if it turns out there are none available at the time you plant, the smaller trowels will work fine.

I suggest leaving a couple of potatoes uncut on the windowsill in the classroom so the kids can see the sprouts develop.

I also suggest peeling and cutting up a few potatoes and offering them to the kids to each raw. We did this when I was a kid and I also did it with my children and grandchildren. Though we ate them with salt when I was growing up, I did not pass that part on to my children or grandchildren and they still ate them.

"Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds you plant." Robert Louis Stevenson

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