Keep Your Eyes on the Potato

Last summer I wanted to plant some potatoes. I went to our local nursery to buy some seed potatoes but the nursery staff told me that they did not have any in stock because they usually only carry them when the weather is cooler. I was disappointed at first, but as we got to talking more, to the gentleman gave me a tip that has been invaluable. He told me you can take a potato from the store and let it begin to sprout. Once sprouting, each eye can be cut off into a chunk and planted. The chunks will then grow into their own potato plant. OF COURSE! Once I heard his words, it totally made sense to me and I knew I had to try it. I went to our local market and bought some of my favorites...the baby reds and goldens. I put them into a brown bag in our cupboard and left them. After about 1-2 weeks, I opened the bag and there were the potatoes with their little eyes staring back at me. I planted them in an are in our garden and sure enough...they grew into potato plants, and flowered. One afternoon my daughter and I dug them up. We had a lot of fun...it was kind of like a treasure hunt. We would dig and then sift through the soil and pull them out. We scrubbed them thoroughly, and boiled them with the skins on. We mashed them with a little butter and heavy cream. They were the absolute best potatoes we had ever had. Even though they were mashed they still had what I can only describe as a touch of crispiness.
Well, imagine my surprise when this weekend I looked in our lower cupboard and found that some of our russets had sprouted. Thus far we have only done this technique with Reds, Golden and Purple Potatoes, so this is kind of an experiment...based on the same principles.

I cut the potato into chunks, leaving a major sprout on each of the chunks. 

Quartered potato

After cutting the potato into chunks, I went outside and prepared the soil. Potatoes prefer a loose soil so I prepared a mixture of my general purpose soil that is in my beds with about 1/3 part potting soil mixture and I also added a fair amount of wood shavings. I like to add these to the potatoes soil because it seems to hold moisture longer, is lightweight and breaks down back into soil very easily. Also, we have the shavings on hand because we use them as bedding in our chicken coop. I mixed the parts together thoroughly and roughly formed a mound.

Notice the green leaves on the left hand side.
They belong to two potato plants that I planted in a few weeks ago.
I transplanted them into this mound to give them a little more room.

After forming my mound, I pushed the potato chunks about 4" into the soil and lightly compacted the soil around them. I them added the transplanted guys and lightly watered them all.

Above is my completed mound with soaker hose...when needed.

I think planting the potatoes in this location at this time of year is great because they get full afternoon sunlight and the concrete block wall behind them absorbs the heat from the suns rays and radiates that heat back in the evening and into the night. Even here in southern California, at this time of year we can get down into the low 40's at night.
So there you have it...This is how I have been harvesting healthy, homegrown vegetables from something that most people may consider a few days away from the compost bin.