We harvested our barrel potatoes yesterday. As you can see in the photo, it wasn’t quite the bumper crop we were expecting. The stalks and leaves weren’t nearly as brown and dead as I was waiting for but some people were very eager to see how things had turned out. There were lots of smaller potatoes and dozens of little nubs which could have developed into potatoes so the potential for a better harvest was certainly there. I didn’t see where our larger potatoes appeared vertically in the barrel. If the big ones were mostly at the bottom, I would guess that the others would have fattened up if they were harvested a little later. If the big ones were at the top, I’d guess that I added soil too quickly and should have given each level more development time. If it was just random, then our small potatoes could be blamed on either of those reasons or planting too densely, not adding plant food, or a number of other reasons. We still have many other potato plants planted the traditional way in other areas of garden so we’re not about to starve. I also don’t expect Superstore to be sold out of potatoes for the next year.
In the end, it was a fun experiment. Everyone in the house had fun watching the potatoes grow and getting out to water them. I’ll plant another crop next year. I’ll have to check how to preserve my starter potatoes from year to year though. There are other plans for the garden so there won’t be as much room for potatoes next year.
