Is it a potato?
Friday, April 27, 2007
I think this is a potato plant. It's the first one to emerge from the ground, after a topsy-turvy planting of seed potatoes 4 weeks ago. It looks promising, doesn't it?
I think this is a potato plant. It's the first one to emerge from the ground, after a topsy-turvy planting of seed potatoes 4 weeks ago. It looks promising, doesn't it?
11 Comments:
Looks like a potato to me! We grew them last year. They make beautiful plants!
Yup, that's a potato. Different varieties have different foliage. But the one there in the photo is a potato.
Congratulations on your green leafy tops. I'm still waiting for mine. But I think I planted a couple of weeks after you did. The normal planting date is St. Patrick's Day (easy to remember, Ireland/spuds). But it has been a cooler than normal spring. Everything's been delayed.
Another interesting factoid: You can grow potatoes vertically. In fact, you don't need a garden. You can do this with automobile tires. Fill a tire with soil, even on pavement. Plant a few potato sets. As they grow, add more tire and more soil. The plant will just get higher and higher. The potatoes being stems--not roots--will just continue to form. At the end of the season, you just start removing potatoes from the top tire and work your way down.
Pretty neat, huh?
Yep, that's a potato. Mine are already quite big. I planted Red Duke and its leaves are a very pretty purply green. This is the first year that I'm growing tatties.
Ed,
That is a neat idea. Great way to make use of old tires, too. I only wonder: is it safe to use tires when growing food? I've heard it's not a good idea to use pressure-treated wood in the garden, because the chemicals leach into the soil. I wonder if anything similar happens with tires. Synthetic rubber is made from petroleum products, I think.
That is a potato!
Sigrun
Yep, looks exactly like my potato plants when they now came up. This batch I grew from supermarket potatoes, every batch of "seed" potato tubers I planted failed, maybe they aren't bred for a tropical climate.
I harvested my first potatoes yesterday - little red pontiacs. I sometimes forget that I live so far south.
I saw boxes and boxes of seed potatoes at the grocery store today and your potato-planting story came to mind! Now I see that they are growing ... yes!
Cool, didnt know potatos had leaves!I live and learn everyday.
What will you do with your hopefully bumper crop of potatoes?
To my knowledge, tires leaching into the potatoes is not a problem. Always give root vegetables a good washing. The trouble with pressure-treated wood is toxic chemicals potentially leaching into the soil. I've heard, but not investigated for myself, that there is now a treated lumber that is not toxic.
Snappy,
I'm planning to make potato salads. Lots and lots of potato salads!
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