Cutting, Planting and Harvesting Potatoes

I got my potatoes planted today (finally...I should have had them in no later than Valentine's Day here in Texas) before this oncoming flu gets any worse. Here's the steps to giving them a good start:

1. Purchase disease resistant potatoseed stock from your local nursery.
2. Cut into pieces (for more plants from one potato) with at least one eye in each piece.

Let them dry for at least one week (I was forced by weather and family duties to postpone planting right away).
3. Dig a trench in your planting row at least 3 inches, but I try to go 4 inches.

4. Place cut pieces in trench at 18 inches apart. Sometimes I place two small pieces together to make sure I get at least one plant to come up.

5. Cover and water!

Once plantings start coming up, you can protect them with gallon milk jugs with the bottom cut out, or like me, if we get frost I leave them alone as it will burn them back but not likely kill the plants. Mine re-sprouted after a late frost last season and I still ended up with a great harvest.

You'll know when it's time to harvest when the plants have dried up and died to the ground. Once plants die, I wait two weeks before I dig them up. This gives them a chance to toughen up their skins. I also pick them up off of the ground and place them on a drying table for a few days prior to storage.

So Your Child Wants to Be a Vegetable Gardener

When my mother first found out that I’d had even the slightest interest in vegetable gardening, she started me off learning with a few simple tools. One of those tools was educating me on how plants grow under certain conditions. We embarked on what has now been a 45 year love affair with the vegetable garden and all that happens in it.

The very first step we took together was that which has happened in most family homes for many years…the Sweet Potato! Yes, she cut the top off of a sweet potato and forced some toothpicks into it so that it would sit in just enough water in an old mason jar filled to the top. I was instructed to watch for new roots and shoots that would start appearing soon.

To my great excitement, the day came when I walked into the kitchen counter and, behold, tiny little roots and shoots started to show themselves. I quickly hurried to mom’s bedroom and began to shake her awake, insisting that she hurry to see the new growth. She reluctantly wrapped herself up in her housecoat and came to the kitchen.

In my exuberance, we found three new sprouts from the top of the sweet potato and, too numerous to remember, lots of tiny new roots coming out of the bottom of the cut end of the potato. We had success! We watched that old cut piece of potato grow shoots, that had also grown adventitious roots out of them as well, and enough roots to support all of that growth.

As time went on, we snipped and gathered some of those sprouts that were now about one foot tall, and went out to a prepared garden area where we were to grow these little plants into edible tubers. I was so excited that I asked mom if there were other vegetables that we could do the same thing with.
Of course she said yes, and immediately went to the refrigerator and collected an almost used up stalk of celery. She made me diligently trim off a few stalks and keep just 3 or 4 of the tiniest stalks. We placed the bottom of that little crown of celery in a bowl of warm water and as I did with the sweet potato, watch it begin to grow. I changed the water daily. I then began to notice that the existing small stalks started to grow a little.

Then I noticed that the stalks started to expand out and away from the center. Something magical was happening and I couldn’t keep my eyes, or for that matter my mind off of that little crown of celery sitting in that bowl of water. A few more days went by and I began to see roots. I was surely becoming a gardener at eight years old.

I soon took that little experiment out to its own space reserved specifically for celery and planted it according to my mother’s explicit instructions. She then started showing me how to prepare soil by making and adding some compost. We discussed seeds and how to store, freeze if necessary, and eventually plant them at just the right time. She taught me the importance of doing things right the “first time” and everything else that I needed to do to get the best results.

I was becoming a very good gardener with lots of experience by the time I was eleven years old. Not many kids in my neighborhood could say that! I was always thrilled to run home from school and get any homework done before I could go out and learn something new in the vegetable garden. During a time when a famous brand of canned vegetables was running an extremely popular commercial to advertise its canned goods,and I was growing like a weed myself, I was known as the green giant on my street.

I planted everything from green beans, to broccoli, to cantaloupe and zucchini. I learned things that still have value to my life, even outside of the vegetable garden. I had quickly become popular with those that were also growing their own vegetables in the community. We all had “green thumbs” and enjoyed sharing information that would help each other produce the best yields for our efforts.
Now that I’m an old coot, I still find myself overjoyed to share what I’ve learned through the years. And to think, it all started with a little piece of sweet potato!

Are You Staking or Caging Your Tomatoes?

You need to make a choice whether or not to stake or cage your tomatoes, but you need to understand the pros and cons to each side of the issue. Who do you listen to when asking the question of staking or caging your tomatoes?

Everyone has an opinion, so I’m going to give you practical experience gained over the years using both staking and caging, or just letting them grow on the ground.





On the ground:
Let’s start off with just letting them grow on the ground. This method of growing your tomatoes uses up a lot of your garden planting area, especially indeterminate varieties that will grow from 6 to 10 feet tall. They will cover a lot of ground and you may not have the room to allow this. Your plants may become easily attractive to many more ground dwelling insects than they would if they were staked or caged.

It may be a little more difficult to fertilize properly with vines trailing across the garden. You need to get the fertilizer into the root zone and if you don’t remember where it is, you may miss the mark. Place a small stake near the planted area if you grow your tomatoes on the ground to give you an idea where the root zone is and to help you know where your fertilizer should be applied.


Staking:
Staking tomatoes can create problems because you need to keep an eye on your plants on a regular basis to avoid missing tying up wandering new stems and branches. Staking consumes time each day that you must commit to the plants.

As with caging, staking saves a lot of space by keeping your plants up off of the ground. This also allows you to plant more plants because it saves space. Planting more plants close enough together also helps to shade the ground, acting as a living mulch. The tomatoes are so much easier to pick because the plant stands upright. There won’t be as much bending and stooping.

When you force a tomato plant to grow in an upright position, you’ll find some disadvantages as well. The fruit will be more susceptible to problems, because the plant is now growing differently than what is normal, that expose the fruit to the elements. Sunburn is now a possibility. Cracking of the fruit can happen now because the fruit is exposed to winds and the fruit now have a better chance to get blossom end rot.

It’s best to mulch your staked tomatoes heavily. With the plant standing all alone (with a single planting), the likelihood of losing moisture from unprotected soil is far greater. There are a variety of great reasons to mulch your plant(s) anyway, but the best is moisture retention. Tomatoes are water lovers. If you can reduce the amount of money spent on water, but keep the plants evenly moist, you’ll produce good looking and tasting tomatoes.

Drive a stake at least 12” into the ground. Plant tomatoes that are a minimum of 6” tall, and remove all but the top 2 sets of leaves. Cover the stem all the way up to the underside of the first set of leaves and lightly pack the soil around the stem. Once the plant is tall enough, start tying the stems to the stake. With determinate tomatoes, you do not need to remove sucker growth. When staking an indeterminate tomato, you should remove all sucker growth.


Caging tomatoes:
There are almost as many different types of cages on the market as there are tomato varieties out there. From simple 6” wire mesh cut to attain a diameter of 3’, to a fancy stackable and foldable cage that can be purchased online, the gardener has a lot to choose from.

No matter what you choose to cage your tomatoes, make sure that you securely stake the cage to the ground. By doing this, you will help keep the plant and the cage upright in heavy winds.


As with staked tomatoes, you should mulch heavily with something like wheat straw to help retain moisture. Wrap the first two feet of the cage in clear plastic.

This will increase temperatures around the plant and protect it from damaging winds in the early stages of the plants life, and it will help to heat up the area around the new plants when you plant in early spring.

How to Can-Up Homemade Dill Pickle Chips

Hamburgers, hot dogs and sandwiches. You name it and you can put a dill pickle on it to give whatever you’re eating a little extra zing!


By reading this article, you’ll learn how to make enough of your own dill pickle chips to last you through the summer months and longer (you can adjust to your need).

Click here if you need a Canning Kit



Here’s the recipe:
16 pounds of pickling cucumbers cut into ¼ inch slices
2 quarts of water
2 quarts of white distilled vinegar
6 Tablespoons of a pickling spice mixture
1 and ½ cups of granulated sugar (You can use half Splenda if you choose)
6 large sprigs of fresh dill weed
1 cup of pickling salt
1 Cup of regular salt (do not use Iodized salt)
1 teaspoon of minced garlic per each quart Mason jar
1/8 teaspoon of a pickling crisp product to each Mason jar



Wash and slice all cucumbers and place them in a large container and cover with 1 cup of regular salt, water and ice. I use a wavy cutting tool to help make the chips look nicer than just a flat cut.

 Let this stand for one hour. When you are ready to use them, drain, rinse and repeat.



Combine all other ingredients except dill weed, pickling spices and pickling crisp to a large pot. Wrap pickling spices into a piece of cheesecloth and tie off.

Place this sack of spices into the liquid, pickling salt and sugar and stir until dissolved. Bring to a boil for 3 minutes and then turn down to a simmer for 10 minutes.


Stuff slices into hot mason jars and place a teaspoon of garlic, pickling crisp and one sprig of dill weed into each jar prior to filling with liquid.

Pour hot liquid mixture into jars, leaving 1” of head space. Make sure you remove any air bubbles from the jars.

Wipe rim of jars off to remove any residual material and place lids and bands onto jars.

Tighten to just hand tight and place into a “hot water bath” canner. Bring to a rapid boil and set timer for 15 minutes.

Remove hot jars from the canner and set them on a flat surface with two thicknesses of towels on the counter. This will help prevent the jars from cracking.

Cool for 12 – 24 hours making sure you check that each jar sealed properly. Twist off bands and store in your pantry.


This recipe makes approximately 6 quarts of dill pickle chips. Wait at least 4 weeks before consuming.