My kiddo hucked a very shriveled potato into my garden bed last fall as I was building it. I didn’t think much of it because it was buried down in a mushroom compost layer below the soil and sat there during a cold and snowy winter with several deep freezes.
Lo and behold, this big boy turned up. It survived a late season freeze so I feel like it’s earned the right to go on but I’ve also heard horror stories about potatoes introducing disease and I don’t want to fuck up this big organic food bed I’ve been working so hard on.
Should I leave it? Try to move it? Build a soil tower around it to get maximum yield? Help a newbie out please. Thanks🍃
by NextKaleidoscope3167
20 Comments
Poh tay toes
Just leave it and dig it up in 3 months to harvest the potatoes..
lol oh you haven’t met potatoes.
I dug up potatoes for four years straight after taking over a garden plot. Nutrient sucking little demons. Even going a foot deep I somehow missed the tiniest little less than a dime sized potato babies and would have to do it again. Every year.
Leave it, it’s gorgeous! Disease is always a risk when you bring in a live plant that isn’t like certified disease-free, but if it’s got any diseases they’ll be potato diseases anyway and shouldn’t harm squash etc
Make French fries, stop complaining. Thank the good Lord these are your problems.
Boil ’em, mash ’em, stick ’em in a stew.
Let it grow, let it grow, let it grow.
What’s taters, precious?
You’re gonna have potatoes forever now, just accept your fate.
Mulch
Well, you’ll have potatoes now. This right here is why I dislike burying anything, stems, roots or other plant pieces; it’s the things you don’t want to grow that end up doing the best 😂
I did have potatoes introduce early blight into my garden and it was a nightmare, BUT I think you’ll likely be fine with this one. If you see signs of early blight get it the heck out of there, but otherwise I would leave it and enjoy the treasure hunt later!!
let er buck
potatoes are bullies….they will cover and push other plants…but they delicious.
You’d be surprised, I once had a few potatoes overwinter in Alaska! And when I dug them up they were the size of my forearm!!! Purple potatoes too!
Gave it a name and when you harvest tell your kiddo that they did a good job
The title makes it seem like you tried comitting murder before it came back from the dead lol
1. Wait
2. Eat potato
I mean really you’ve got two options
Potatoes will literally grow anywhere at anytime. I just looked at my garden that I haven’t cleaned up from last year and found a clutch of return potatoes