what do potatoes look like when they are ready to harvest
Potatoes are an easy-to-grow and productive crop that y'all tin can savor harvesting right from your backyard. They go into the footing in early jump, are harvested late summer, and can exist stored through autumn and winter.
Harvesting your potatoes can exist a fun family activity with the reward of tender, tasty tubers to cook afterwards. Shop-bought potatoes don't have anything on homegrown ones!
Here's what you demand to know well-nigh 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 tin can feel intimidating. After all, y'all tin't see the tubers before you lot harvest them! Luckily, once y'all know what to look for your potato plants will tell you when information technology's time to harvest.
These same techniques and tips for knowing when to harvest potatoes apply whether y'all're harvesting potatoes in containers, grow numberless, traditional beds, or some other method.
Your potato crop can exist harvested at two stages depending on what kind of potatoes yous want.
Yous look for dissimilar signs depending on which type of tater you want: new potatoes or storage potatoes.
When to harvest new potatoes
New potatoes can be thought of equally baby potatoes.
They are small, thin-skinned, and very tender. Because of their sparse skins, new potatoes don't store well, but they are some of the about delicious potatoes you lot'll always melt with and eat!
So how exercise you know when to harvest new potatoes?
The primal is to watch your plants for the right signs. Once flowers course on your potato plants it's virtually fourth dimension. Wait until the flowers start to fade and drop off the plant. You tin can and then kickoff harvesting, and your potatoes will remain in this tender stage for 2-3 weeks.
Making use of a potato grow pocketbook with a flap tin help you proceed an eye on your potatoes. You tin see how big (or small) they are and judge whether you want to pick some for dinner.
When to harvest storage potatoes
Likewise called main-crop potatoes, storage tubers are larger and have thick skins. This is the type you can cure and continue over the wintertime months.
You may need to protect your potato beds or containers from wildlife, pets, or fifty-fifty children then they can stay in the ground long enough to become storage potatoes. I one time had a dog who loved excavation up potatoes so I had to eat my entire crop fresh that twelvemonth instead of storing them!
What practice spud plants expect similar when ready to harvest?
Knowing when to harvest potatoes for storage is all about watching your plants.
The leaves of your plants will showtime to turn yellowish at the terminate of the flavour. Once the leafage is completely brownish and dry, it'southward well-nigh fourth dimension to harvest, but there are a few steps you can take to improve your crop.
Many growers recommend cutting the foliage almost all the style to the footing in one case it's completely brown. (Merely make sure you call back where your potatoes are!)
And so, let the tubers keep sitting in the ground for 10-14 days later on you cutting back the leaf. This allows the skins to become good and thick for storage. After this time flow y'all tin can get ahead and harvest them.
The one exception to this is if your soil is very wet at the end of the flavor. If this is the case, it'south ameliorate to harvest as soon equally the foliage dies dorsum to preclude your potatoes from rotting in the ground.
Besides, exist sure to harvest them all, prepare or not, before the first hard frost!
How to harvest potatoes
Now that y'all know when to harvest potatoes, the fun part is actually earthworks them up! That is, as long as you don't mind getting a niggling dingy.
The biggest tip to call back when harvesting your tubers is to do your best not to cut into them with your shovel, particularly if you lot want to keep them in storage.
This can exist easier said than done, but you'll get ameliorate with do.
How to harvest new potatoes
New potatoes tin can oftentimes be harvested simply by using your easily rather than a garden tool.
If yous grew yours in the basis, reach with your gloved hand into the side of ane of the hills you piled up around your potatoes. Feel around gently, collecting tubers as y'all go. Once you have as many every bit you want, pile the soil back up and so the rest of your potatoes can keep maturing.
If y'all're growing in raised beds or some kind of container, just carefully dig your manus downwards through the soil until you striking potato aureate. Elevator them out gently and house the soil back around your plants when you're done.
Of course, if you're but growing potatoes to eat them new and not for storage, you can simply dig them all upward at once.
How to harvest storage potatoes
Before digging upwardly your whole murphy crop, it's a expert idea to dig upwards a exam department first. You can check i of the tubers to encounter if the skin on information technology is thick and well-attached. If the peel tin can easily be rubbed off with your finger, you demand to wait longer to harvest.
Each gardener has their preferred tool for excavation out their potatoes. A garden fork or a sturdy shovel are the two best options.
Whichever ane yous work with, the key is to dig downward about a foot away from the plants and start to loosen and lift up the root mass. In one case you've gone all the way around a section of plants, you lot should be able to pull up the main root system, which volition have lots of potatoes attached.
When y'all use a earthworks fork or shovel, try to dig nether the plant and lift information technology free, allowing the dirt to fall through the tines.
Pull the potatoes off of the root mass and identify them in a container. In one case yous've dug up your plants, go back through the soil with your hands to discover potatoes still hiding there. There volition be some extras and so don't skip this step!
If you accidentally poke or slice any potatoes (which happens to anybody), set them aside to cook with.
How to store potatoes
Later on harvesting, brush the dirt off your potatoes, only don't wash them or get them moisture. Also, don't leave them out in the sun too long or you'll get dreaded green potatoes (which tin make y'all sick if eaten).
Cure your potatoes past laying them out in a cool, dark, and dry out location for 1-2 weeks. The ideal temperature for curing is anywhere between 45-60°F.
Once cured, your potatoes tin can be stored in numberless or boxes that have ventilation holes, but don't layer them too deeply because this encourages rotting.
Sort through your tubers before storing and discard any that are hobbling, cutting, dark-green, or show signs of rot.
Your storage area should be night and preferably somewhere betwixt 40-50°F. This could be a cold basement, root cellar, or garage attached to the home. Bank check on your potatoes regularly for signs of rotting or shriveling.
Serious gardeners and homesteaders frequently employ a harvest rack to store potatoes. Root vegetable storage bins and bags tin can also piece of work, too.
Never store potatoes in your refrigerator or continue them adjacent to apples. Depending on variety, your tubers tin last for 4-6 months in storage.
There are two reasons to avoid storing your potatoes in the fridge.
Ane is that potatoes, fifty-fifty after they're harvested, convert starch to sugar and vice versa depending on the temperature. When stored in the refrigerator, your potatoes will convert starch to sugar, which tastes weird.
Another, more than important reason to avoid putting your potatoes in the fridge is that storing them in the fridge can lead to higher levels of acrylamide, a potentially hazardous compound produced when yous cook potatoes at high temperatures. Acrylamide tin crusade cancer in animals, so it might be harmful to homo health, too (source).
Potato varieties to grow
Here are a few of the best varieties for new and storage potatoes, plus some fun and unusual white potato varieties thrown in:
York Gold are tasty yellow potatoes that can be dug upwardly new or for storage (half dozen+ months). They're a classic option with smoother mankind than russet potatoes. Yukon gilt are one of my personal favorites! They're delicious for polish, creamy mashed potatoes
Yukon Jewel is a like disease-resistant variety.
The russet Burbank is a white potato that's great for blistering and fries. It's long-lasting in storage.
Red Pontiac potatoes have red pare white interiors. They are known for high yields and are good for storage. They're an fantabulous selection for habitation gardeners!
Fingerling potatoes are long, thin potatoes best eaten fresh for a succulent, gourmet sense of taste.
The Adirondack Blue murphy has blue skin and blue to purple flesh. Remarkably, it keeps its color when cooked!
These potatoes are much more cute in real life than this photo suggests.
With hundreds of varieties of potatoes out at that place to endeavour, you lot have a prepare-fabricated alibi to abound potatoes in your garden every year!
And if you ever get tired of digging them all up, you lot can attempt growing in containers that just get dumped out at the end of the flavour. Either way, you're probable to hold that freshly dug and cooked potatoes are the best!
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Natasha Garcia-Lopez is an avoid home-gardener and proud owner of 88 acres of land in rural Due west Virginia. She was a fellow member of the Clan for Living History Farms and Agricultural Museums for many years and is currently enrolled in the Oregon State Academy Master Gardner Short Course programme so she can better assist y'all 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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