Potatoes are in the ground!!!

 

My target day for planting the potatoes was May 1 but I would have been equally thrilled if they had gotten in the ground within a week on either side of that date.

I got the potatoes planted today.

The rows started bellying out to the left and then hooking back to the right. I was in a hurry and did not stretch a line. These rows are also longer than my usual garden row. They are 100 feet long, give or take a bit.

The problem, I deduced, was that the gas tank is biased to the right of the center line of my rototiller. I was visually sighting over the center of my gas-tank which first caused me to list to the port and then as I neared the far marker I corrected to the starboard.

I think I need to install gunsights on the tiller if I continue to favor long rows.

I am tuckered out. I put in 100 ft of Yukon Gold, 100 ft of Megachip, 100 ft of Kennabec, and 300 ft of "Rescued" feral potatoes from last year. I pulled the rescues from assorted patches where I had previously grown potatoes.

According to Michigan State University field trials, if you do everything right (enough nitrogen, irrigate, quick foliage canopy, control potato beetles, plant virus free seed) you can reasonably expect to harvest one pound of potatoes per square foot of potato patch.

In today's cosmetic world, a significant percentage of them cannot be sold as Grade A. Some will be too big or too small or too lumpy. But if you are hungry I don't know how worried you will be about cosmetics.

Because of the width of my tiller, I plant rows that are 42" apart. Roughly speaking, if everything goes peachy I might have to dig up 1800 pounds of potatoes. Experience tells me that digging potatoes is much, much heavier work than planting them.

I am an old man. Planting 600 feet of garden was enough for one day. I am recovering by sipping on a spring tonic that is a tincture of spearmint shoots and assorted carbohydrates as is traditional for the day the Kentucky Derby runs.

A few photos

 

A couple of shots showing the degree of leafing out of deciduous trees. I saw my second swallow today but in a different neighborhood.

 

I was at Mom's Thursday and Friday.

She wanted to show me this picture of her mother's family. There was a bit of speculation regarding which of these fine looking, young ladies is my mother's mother. My money is on the one behind the patriarch's right shoulder.

Weeds never sleep.

This is a photo of where I cut multiflora rose bushes. You can see where I missed one on the extreme right side of the photo. It is the ball of bright, spring-green.

Weed control is endless. It is a leaky process. As futile as controlling weeds seems to be, the only thing a hundred times worse than attempting to control weeds are the results you will get if you don't try to keep a lid on them.