Potatoes!

We had gone to Walmart the other today to buy more bell peppers plants. I use so many of red bell peppers and they’re so expensive to buy, I figured I’d plant more peppers. I bought some red and some yellow pepper plants, though I think, in the end, if I leave green peppers on the vine long enough, they will turn red or yellow. I usually chop and freeze dry the green ones but the red and yellow ones, I will roast and can. I think I planted 10 more pepper plants. I already had 6 bell peppers, 6 jalapeno peppers and 6 giant Marconi peppers. I love those giant Marconi peppers and probably should have planted more of those but I’m done planting.

While in the garden center, they had red rhubarb marked down to $1 per root. The roots do not look very healthy but I figured for $1, I’d risk buying two of them. About half of my rhubarb is green and half is red. I think the red is so much prettier, even in dishes, but I had read that the green grows better here. The green is so prolific and the stalks seem to stay a bit more tender but I wanted more red so I bought two of those roots and had no place to plant them.

It’s about two weeks til time to harvest potatoes. I have 13 tubs of potatoes so I harvested the potatoes out of one tub and planted the rhubarb roots in there. We’ll see if they sprout. If not, I’ve wasted $2. 🙂

I grabbed two of the bigger ones and baked those and then used a few for breakfast a couple of mornings before taking the picture. There was a bit over 15 pounds of potatoes in that tub. I had 13 tubs of potatoes. Actually, I ran out of tubs and had to put some in the big grow bags. I also have a 4 x 8 bed that has been taken over by potatoes. I think those all came from the compost bin several ago when I dumped a bucket full of potato peelings from a big potato canning job. I would prefer NOT to have potatoes in my raised beds but can’t seem to get them all out of there. There are three potato plants in a 4 x 4 raised bed. I think I’m close to getting all the potatoes out of that bed. If all the tubs/bags have at least 10 pounds of potatoes, and probably 20 or 30 pounds from the two raised beds, we may have enough potatoes to make it til next year’s harvest!

Growing root crops always brings a surprise. I never seem to get everything out of the ground and then something returns the next year that I had not planted. While pulling the collards out of the ground, I came across something small, bright red and round. I thought it was a radish but the more I dug, the bigger they got and I remembered I had planted pink potatoes last year. Up until this year, I planted all the potatoes in grow bags. At the end of the season, after I thought I had harvested all the potatoes, I would dump the soil into a raised bed. I always see a few small potatoes I missed. If there are enough, I’ll add them to green beans but if it’s just one or two tiny potatoes, I pull them out and toss them. Apparently I missed one of the pink potatoes and it grew.

I used them for breakfast potatoes one morning and every bite made me think I was getting a bite of ham. Makes me wish I had planted red potatoes this year but mostly all I planted were kitchen potatoes that had sprouted. There was one bag of seed potatoes I planted but I don’t remember what kind nor do I remember what bags/tubs they’re in. Doesn’t matter. I can tell the difference in Russets and Yukon Gold and I think that’s what the majority of them are.