After 10 weeks of waiting, not so patiently, I discovered on Wednesday that my potato plants had finally topped the wheat straw! I seriously thought those potatoes had rotted long ago and that I was stuck with an expensive experiment. Looks like I was wrong, thankfully.
I got the seed potatoes from Wood Praire Farms in Maine. They shipped them to me in November, at my request, back when I thought we were going to have access to a garden spot at church for the homeschool co-op kids. When that idea fell through, I sat them on my clothes dryer for a couple of weeks until most all of the potatoes had a little sprouting going on, and then I spread them out in the raised beds and covered them with wheat straw.
Nothing, nothing and more nothing. They did not sprout, they did not send up shoots. They laid there and whispered failure into my ear.
And now, a week after spring officially began, I have a sweet story to tell, about my impatience and the need to back off the performance-based farming approach I have been using. ADD farming is what I call it. And it doesn't promote a wait-and -see mentality, if you know what I mean.
Oh, potato varieties: Yukon Gold, Caribe, and Onaway. All three are up. The Yukons are the slowest but I am not complaining any more. Really.
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