How Do You Know When Your Potatoes Are Ready to Harvest
Potatoes are an easy-to-abound and productive ingather that you can enjoy harvesting right from your backyard. They become into the basis in early spring, are harvested tardily summer, and tin can be stored through autumn and winter.
Harvesting your potatoes can exist a fun family activeness with the reward of tender, tasty tubers to cook afterwards. Store-bought potatoes don't have anything on homegrown ones!
Here's what yous demand to know about when to harvest potatoes, how to dig them up, and how to store them correctly.
When to harvest potatoes from your garden
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Knowing when to harvest potatoes can feel intimidating. Later on all, yous can't see the tubers before you harvest them! Luckily, in one case you know what to wait for your murphy plants will tell you when it's fourth dimension to harvest.
These same techniques and tips for knowing when to harvest potatoes apply whether yous're harvesting potatoes in containers, grow bags, traditional beds, or another method.
Your potato crop can be harvested at two stages depending on what kind of potatoes you want.
You await for different signs depending on which type of tater you want: new potatoes or storage potatoes.
When to harvest new potatoes
New potatoes tin be thought of as baby potatoes.
They are pocket-sized, thin-skinned, and very tender. Because of their thin skins, new potatoes don't store well, merely they are some of the near delicious potatoes you'll ever cook with and swallow!
So how do you lot know when to harvest new potatoes?
The fundamental is to watch your plants for the correct signs. Once flowers form on your potato plants information technology's almost fourth dimension. Wait until the flowers outset to fade and drib off the establish. You can then beginning harvesting, and your potatoes will remain in this tender stage for 2-3 weeks.
Making use of a potato grow bag with a flap tin help yous keep an eye on your potatoes. You can come across how big (or minor) they are and guess whether you want to selection some for dinner.
When to harvest storage potatoes
Also called main-crop potatoes, storage tubers are larger and have thick skins. This is the type you can cure and go on over the winter months.
You may demand to protect your potato beds or containers from wild animals, pets, or even children so they can stay in the ground long enough to become storage potatoes. I once had a dog who loved excavation upwards potatoes so I had to swallow my entire ingather fresh that yr instead of storing them!
What practice spud plants await like when set up to harvest?
Knowing when to harvest potatoes for storage is all about watching your plants.
The leaves of your plants will start to turn yellow at the end of the flavour. In one case the leafage is completely brown and dry, it's almost time to harvest, merely there are a few steps you lot can take to better your crop.
Many growers recommend cutting the foliage near all the way to the ground one time it's completely brown. (Merely make sure you lot call back where your potatoes are!)
Then, permit the tubers go on sitting in the footing for 10-fourteen days after yous cut back the foliage. This allows the skins to become expert and thick for storage. After this time period y'all tin can go ahead and harvest them.
The one exception to this is if your soil is very wet at the end of the flavour. If this is the instance, it's better to harvest as soon as the leafage dies back to prevent your potatoes from rotting in the ground.
Also, be certain to harvest them all, set or not, earlier the first hard frost!
How to harvest potatoes
Now that you know when to harvest potatoes, the fun part is actually digging them upward! That is, as long equally you don't heed getting a little dirty.
The biggest tip to recollect when harvesting your tubers is to do your best not to cut into them with your shovel, specially if you want to keep them in storage.
This tin be easier said than done, but yous'll get better with exercise.
How to harvest new potatoes
New potatoes tin often be harvested simply by using your hands rather than a garden tool.
If yous grew yours in the ground, attain with your gloved hand into the side of one of the hills you piled upwards around your potatoes. Feel around gently, collecting tubers every bit you go. One time you have as many as you lot desire, pile the soil support and then the residual of your potatoes can go on maturing.
If you're growing in raised beds or some kind of container, just carefully dig your hand down through the soil until you hit potato gold. Lift them out gently and firm the soil back around your plants when y'all're washed.
Of course, if you're only growing potatoes to eat them new and not for storage, you tin simply dig them all up at once.
How to harvest storage potatoes
Before digging upwards your whole potato ingather, it's a skillful idea to dig upward a test section start. Y'all can cheque one of the tubers to encounter if the pare on it is thick and well-attached. If the skin can easily exist rubbed off with your finger, you lot need to wait longer to harvest.
Each gardener has their preferred tool for digging out their potatoes. A garden fork or a sturdy shovel are the 2 best options.
Whichever one you work with, the key is to dig downwardly about a pes away from the plants and start to loosen and lift upwards the root mass. Once you lot've gone all the way around a section of plants, yous should exist able to pull up the main root arrangement, which will have lots of potatoes fastened.
When you utilise a digging fork or shovel, try to dig under the institute and lift it gratuitous, allowing the clay to fall through the tines.
Pull the potatoes off of the root mass and place them in a container. In one case you lot've dug up your plants, go back through the soil with your hands to find potatoes still hiding there. There will be some extras so don't skip this step!
If you accidentally poke or slice whatever potatoes (which happens to everyone), set them aside to cook with.
How to shop potatoes
After harvesting, castor the dirt off your potatoes, but don't launder them or get them wet. Too, don't leave them out in the sun too long or you'll get dreaded green potatoes (which can brand you lot ill if eaten).
Cure your potatoes by laying them out in a cool, night, and dry location for 1-2 weeks. The ideal temperature for curing is anywhere between 45-sixty°F.
In one case cured, your potatoes can be stored in bags or boxes that accept ventilation holes, merely don't layer them besides deeply because this encourages rotting.
Sort through your tubers before storing and discard any that are bruised, cutting, green, or prove signs of rot.
Your storage area should be dark and preferably somewhere between twoscore-50°F. This could be a common cold basement, root cellar, or garage fastened to the home. Check on your potatoes regularly for signs of rotting or shriveling.
Serious gardeners and homesteaders frequently use a harvest rack to store potatoes. Root vegetable storage bins and bags can likewise work, too.
Never store potatoes in your fridge or go on them next to apples. Depending on multifariousness, your tubers can concluding for iv-6 months in storage.
In that location are two reasons to avoid storing your potatoes in the fridge.
I is that potatoes, even after they're harvested, convert starch to sugar and vice versa depending on the temperature. When stored in the fridge, your potatoes will catechumen starch to saccharide, which tastes weird.
Another, more important reason to avoid putting your potatoes in the refrigerator is that storing them in the fridge can pb to higher levels of acrylamide, a potentially chancy compound produced when y'all melt potatoes at high temperatures. Acrylamide tin can cause cancer in animals, and then it might be harmful to homo health, also (source).
Potato varieties to abound
Here are a few of the best varieties for new and storage potatoes, plus some fun and unusual potato varieties thrown in:
York Gold are tasty yellow potatoes that tin be dug upwardly new or for storage (six+ months). They're a classic selection with smoother flesh than russet potatoes. Yukon gilt are i of my personal favorites! They're delicious for polish, creamy mashed potatoes
Yukon Precious stone is a similar disease-resistant diversity.
The russet Burbank is a white murphy that's great for baking and chips. It'south long-lasting in storage.
Red Pontiac potatoes have ruby skin white interiors. They are known for high yields and are skilful for storage. They're an excellent option for domicile gardeners!
Fingerling potatoes are long, thin potatoes best eaten fresh for a delicious, gourmet gustation.
The Adirondack Bluish tater has blue pare and bluish to purple flesh. Remarkably, information technology keeps its color when cooked!
These potatoes are much more than beautiful in real life than this photo suggests.
With hundreds of varieties of potatoes out there to endeavor, y'all accept a ready-made excuse to abound potatoes in your garden every year!
And if you ever go tired of earthworks them all up, you tin try growing in containers that just go dumped out at the end of the season. Either style, you're likely to agree that freshly dug and cooked potatoes are the best!
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Natasha Garcia-Lopez is an avert dwelling-gardener and proud owner of 88 acres of land in rural Westward Virginia. She was a member of the Association for Living History Farms and Agronomical Museums for many years and is currently enrolled in the Oregon State University Master Gardner Short Course program so she can better help you with your gardening questions.She holds a certificate in natural skincare from the School of Natural Skincare.
Source: https://togethertimefamily.com/when-to-harvest-potatoes/
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