I harvested the potatoes today. I had watched videos of people digging their potatoes up in their garden with forks, stabbing them, trying to locate them, etc. My experience was INFINITELY easier than that. I can see how buckets would be impractical for growing thousands of potatoes, but for just a couple plants, it worked out great.
You know the potatoes are ready to harvest when the plant itself finally withers and dies.
I laid a plastic tarp over a folding table, then I simply dumped the contents of each potato bucket out onto it. I used my hands to break apart the roots and soil and separate the potatoes from the dirt.
I picked through the potatoes, discarding any that were too small, broken, or any shade of green. Those just went into the compost bin. The soil was scooped up on the tarp and distributed amongst the beds, mixing with the soil already there.
Okay, so I got about 20 potatoes between the two buckets, and none of them were gigantic. I scrubbed them off dry. You never wash off potatoes after harvesting them, because that begins the rot process. You just remove as much dirt as you can with your hands and a brush. Then I let them sit out in the sun for a couple hours to harden them up.
If I had been planning on storing them, I would have put them in burlap sacks and placed them in a cool, dark place. But there weren't really enough to go to all that trouble, so I made an awesome potato soup with them instead. It tasted great, and the potatoes were perfect.
If I had been planning on storing them, I would have put them in burlap sacks and placed them in a cool, dark place. But there weren't really enough to go to all that trouble, so I made an awesome potato soup with them instead. It tasted great, and the potatoes were perfect.