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?

11 Comments:

Blogger Kylee Baumle said...

Looks like a potato to me! We grew them last year. They make beautiful plants!

10:01 AM  
Blogger Ed Bruske said...

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?

11:24 AM  
Blogger Yolanda Elizabet Heuzen said...

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.

1:12 PM  
Blogger Christa said...

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.

8:05 AM  
Blogger Sigrun said...

That is a potato!

Sigrun

9:02 AM  
Blogger Tira said...

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.

9:10 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I harvested my first potatoes yesterday - little red pontiacs. I sometimes forget that I live so far south.

3:01 PM  
Blogger kate said...

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!

2:08 AM  
Blogger David (Snappy) said...

Cool, didnt know potatos had leaves!I live and learn everyday.
What will you do with your hopefully bumper crop of potatoes?

11:14 AM  
Blogger Ed Bruske said...

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.

2:04 PM  
Blogger Christa said...

Snappy,
I'm planning to make potato salads. Lots and lots of potato salads!

7:31 AM  

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