POTATOES: A Crop Anyone Can Grow

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growing potatoes, potatoes

Even couch potatoes can grow a bumper crop of real potatoes following one of the simple methods below. Make the venture especially interesting by growing different colors and shapes like blue potatoes or fingerlings. Enjoy century old advice from an Illinois farmer and then get serious in choosing a method and location. Spring is on its way. If there is not sufficient rain, water the potatoes regularly whatever method you choose and use dirt or mulch to shield the potatoes from the sun.

“About the first week in February I cut potatoes as for planting, and lay them in a warm place a few days until the cut side is somewhat dried. Then I take a box and put in a layer of dirt one inch deep, a layer of potatoes with the cut side down, then another layer of dirt one inch deep and continue until I have three or four layers of potatoes, keeping them well moistened and in a warm place until planting time, when they will have good sprouts and roots. If there is any danger of frost after they are up, I hoe dirt over them. I tend them well and have potatoes three or four weeks sooner than when I cut them at planting time.” [from an Illinois farmer about 1910]

Purchase seed potatoes instead of using old grocery-store potatoes which were probably treated to prevent them from sprouting easily. Even if they have sprouts, they won’t produce well. In hot climates, choose potatoes with an early or mid-season maturing date and shoot for planting them as soon as possible after the last expected frost date.

When cutting them into pieces, leave at least two eyes (baby sprouts) on each piece and get them ready 1-2 days ahead of your planned planting date so the cut surface dries before planting.

Mix rotted manure or organic compost in the bottom of each trench before putting in the potatoes. Space them about a foot apart and 2 to 4 inches deep. Place them with the eye up.

Before the potato plants start blooming and when about 6 inches tall, hoe loose dirt around them covering the stems of the potato plants. Hilling them, as this procedure is called, helps maintain moisture, supports the plants, and keeps the sun from turning the potatoes green. It may be necessary to pull more dirt onto the potatoes a few times as they grow.

New, or baby, potatoes can be “grappled” [Southern word] in about 10 weeks, and when the plants die back all the potatoes should be harvested. Choose a dry day and take care not to cut or puncture the potatoes while digging them out of the ground. Although we did when I was a child, it is not recommended that the potatoes be washed prior to storing them. Brush off the dirt and put them away.

Method #2. IF your soil is loose and rich, or if you take the time to turn in compost to enrich it, the seed potatoes can be placed on top of the soil and leaf or pine straw mulch heaped on top of them instead of trenching and hilling them. Results will probably be disappointing if the soil underneath the seed potatoes is nutritionally poor. Straw or hay can be used for the mulch but may introduce weeds into the potato bed.

Method #3. Prepare seed potatoes as for the previous methods. Dig a shallow trench (3 to 4 inches), press the prepared seed potatoes into the loose soil a half inch deep. Instead of filling in the trench with garden soil, cover it with straw. As the plants start to grow add additional hay or other mulch. The benefit of methods 2 and 3 is that the new potatoes will form in the mulch and require little effort in harvesting.

If these methods seem like more work than you care to put into growing spuds, try one of these methods:

Place large bags of potting soil flat on the ground, puncture the bag a couple of times on the bottom for drainage, and cut holes in top of the bag, and press the prepared seed potatoes into the loose soil with the eye up so the plant will grow out through the holes. When ready to harvest, simply cut the bag open and shake out the contents, potatoes and all. After you do this a couple of years then try method #3 placing the seed potatoes on top of the emptied soil.

Fill a container half full of straw, place the potatoes on it, eye side up, and finish filling with straw. Make sure the container has a hole for drainage. Containers can be just about anything – cloth shopping/tote bags, laundry baskets, flower pots, trash bags with drainage holes, burlap bags, old tires, old barrels with holes cut in them for the plants to grow through (make sure they have not held toxic contents), old baskets, trash cans, 5-gallon buckets, cardboard boxes, raised beds, wire cages, etc. Even paper bags (doubled for durability) can hold potato plants if you place several bags together, side to side, inside a wooden or wire frame so that the plants don’t collapse when the bags give way.

Place rolls or bales of hay in a sunny location, cut out small openings, and insert a prepared seed potato in each hole. Place the seed potatoes so that the eyes are pointed toward the opening. Fill the hole with soil or more hay. When the plants die back, tear open the hay and remove the potatoes.

Cover an area of sunny ground with cardboard, sheet plastic, or layers of newspaper (no colored ink) for a weed barrier. Spread hay over it and place the seed potatoes on top of the hay. Cover them with a generous layer of hay.

Dig a wide shallow pit in the ground. Place hay in the pit and place the seed potatoes on top of it. Cover with more hay adding more as the plants grow.

Whatever method you choose, Mother Nature is going to do the bulk of the work and still reward you with the best tasting potatoes you’ve ever had. Blissful meals, yall.

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Times Past: A Rather Nostalgic Look

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picking cotton, Southern life

At what point did Americans come to depend on pre-chopped, pre-cooked, fat-laden processed food and lose the basic skills our forebears instinctively knew? Other nations aren’t squeamish about butchering poultry or farm animals and consider doing so a part of everyday fare, while the fair American will shudder at the notion of plucking and dressing a chicken while gobbling down processed chicken “nuggets”.

My grandparents planted vegetables, raised chickens for eggs and meat, fattened pigs for butchering, and were adept at making something out of nothing. My grandfather devoutly believed in planting by the signs and witching for water. Call that hogwash if you please, but during the Depression he fed a family of six on what he made from digging wells by hand and never was cursed with a dry hole.
That piney rock-laden ground sustained and nurtured us and kept us firmly rooted in reality, the same as it had for generations before us.

Muscadines grew wild just begging to be made into jelly to slather onto a hot buttered biscuit. Knotty apples were dried for fried pies, more wormhole and core than real apple, but treasured just the same because come winter those delicately browned pies fit perfectly into our child-sized hands. Christmas trees were cut from the back lot and the only question in choosing one was, “pine or cedar?”. Bushels of peas were shelled by hand and put away to be seasoned with a generous portion of fat back and eaten with hot cornbread and fried potatoes. A watermelon, warm from the garden, was a treat to be savored while expertly spitting the seeds just a tad farther into the yard than the cousins. We neither expected nor received hand-outs and prided ourselves on making do with what God gave us.

I am the last generation of our family to have hoed and picked cotton by hand. I know what it is to drag a ticking bag along and pick into it, feeling it get heavier and heavier across my shoulder as the end of the row slowly drew nearer. I know how sharp the burs are as one quickly plucks the snowy cotton from them. I know what blisters on my hands felt like from hoeing weeds out of that cotton all day. In short, I know the value of a real day’s work and the satisfaction of providing for myself and my family. My grandfather saw to that.

I remember the sheer joy of sitting on the front porch after a day’s work in the cotton field with my cousins, eating fried chicken and cornbread while my grandfather played hymns on his harmonica, fireflies fluttering about in the darkness. If we were lucky, there was peach or blackberry cobbler before spreading Grandmother’s hand-stitched quilts on the porch in the cool night air. Air conditioning wasn’t a luxury we possessed yet and sitting in the cool night air was much preferable to the oppressive heat inside.

I treasure those memories as my grandparents and some of the aunts and uncles have gone to their reward, never again to share in our joys or our sorrows while on this Earth. Even some of the cousins have passed on and as I recall their smiling faces from my youth I’m saddened to think of the glory days we missed together as we grew into adulthood and each got caught up in the business of living, of raising families of our own.

The old home place is long gone, no longer a tangible reminder of those long ago evenings when crickets chirped in unison along with the plaintive melodies floating through the night air from a harmonica lovingly cradled in the hands of my grandfather. The ones of us remaining are scattered across several states, and rarely see each other, but I bet if you asked, we all have the same memories of that old cotton patch, the rocky ground from which our grandfather took peas, corn, okra, and tomatoes, pallets on the front porch, and watermelon juice dripping off our elbows as we giggled away the afternoon.

As we part, gentle reader, let’s look at a brief turn-of-the-century account found in the “Farm Journal” [Jan. 1915] which may give an idea of when and how the self-sufficient lifestyle of my youth began to disappear.

“Betty was neat, trim and comely withal. She was one of the best dairy maids in the whole country round about, and her butter and cheese always found the readiest market. She never wanted a little more sleep and a little more slumber in the morning; but no sooner did the lark and robin begin their caroling, than bounce came Betty out of bed! The cows were milked, the pigs were fed, and breakfast a-doing all before sunrise, and it was said on all hands that Betty would make a noble wife for a farmer; but she turned off each rustic clown and bumpkin that approached her, with the song, ‘O prithee, no more come to woo.’ Betty had laid up a little money, and thought best to go to Boston and spend it; and so she did; but when she returned, alack, it was all over with poor Betty! Her head was brimful of Boston notions. She dared not milk, because she was afraid of a cow. As to hogs, they were odious creatures! And as to getting up early, it was dreadful vulgar. Market Street and Leghorn flats were all her theme—Alas! Poor Betty was ruined!”

Water Conveyance in the 19th Century

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pumps, water pipe, water without electricity

I was recently asked by a reader what type water access her ancestors might have had in 19th century London, and I thought the question was something we might explore further as a supply to water is essential in running a home.

The earliest pipes that conveyed water included stone blocks with cylindrical holes cut through and earthen pipes, often encased in masonry. The Romans used lead pipes for distributing water and later during the Middle Ages logs with holes drilled through them and connected end to end and later lead pipes came into use again.

By the early 20th century, water pipes were made of steel, cast iron, wrought iron, lead, wood, vitrified clay (think terra cotta), or even cement or concrete. We recently saw a section of wooden water pipe in an antique store and were thrilled to have discovered it. Wooden pipes were made from spruce, yellow pine, oak, etc., and were usually about 12 feet long. The bark was usually removed but not always. The earliest models were bored by hand, but machinery was soon invented that was more efficient at hollowing the logs.

Edward Wegmann wrote that in the cities of New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and Detroit pipes were dug up that were perfectly sound having been laid a hundred years before. When buried in the ground and kept from atmospheric changes they lasted a very long time without rotting. The Journal of New England Water Works Assoc., 1916, XXX, p. 318, claimed that such log pipes had been discovered in Boston and Portsmouth, N.H. that were sound and over two hundred years old.

Wegmann dated the earliest log pipes in America to 1652 located in Boston. About 1796 they were replaced with new log pipes where many were used until 1848 when the city replaced all pipes with those made of cast-iron. He dated those first used in New York and Philadelphia to 1774 and 1799. Interestingly enough, London seems to have regressed in its use of piping materials, as he states the lead pipes which melted in the great fire of 1807, were replaced with log pipes. He stated further that there were over 400 miles of wooden log pipes in London during subsequent years.

In 1855, A. Wyckoff, of Elmira, NY, received a patent for an improved water pipe which was spirally bound by a band of iron, steel, or bronze and the whole then coated with an asphalt coating. In Bay City, Mich., the Michigan Pipe Co. acquired the rights to manufacture the Wyckoff pipes in 1880. Companies in Williamsport, PA, Seattle Wash., San Francisco, Tacoma, Wash., Portland, Ore., and Vancouver, BC were also engaged in making the Wyckoff pipes during the first decade of the 20th century.

Cast-iron pipes are thought to date to the 1660’s when Louis XIV of France ordered their use, and possibly earlier. Chelsea Water Co. of London laid a 12 inch cast iron pipe in 1746 which was re-laid in 1791 because the joints were faulty. The engineer, Thomas Simpson, designed the first bell-and-spigot pipe with lead joints about 1785, and the system was soon adopted throughout London.

Cast-iron pipes were imported from England about 1817 and used in Philadelphia where they remained in use a century later. – Wegmann, Edward. Conveyance and Distribution of Water for Water Supply. 1918. NY.

Pumps have been used since 200 BC, with regular boosts in technology. I once lived where water came from a natural spring and was fed into the house by gravity flow (requiring no pump) but had the house been uphill from the spring we would have required a pump of some sort to get the water from the collection tank to a higher level .

Time doesn’t allow for researching early pumps at present, but they have operated off steam power, wind power, turbine power, etc. and for those who want a back-up system for power outages, options still include wind power, hand pumps, ram pumps, and buckets, including those for drilled wells operated by a windlass (a rope and crank which can lower and raise a long narrow vessel designed to fit into the piping for drilled wells).
Photo: From Lehman’s Hardware catalog.

Franklin & Food

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Benjamin Franklin food quotes

The following quotes are taken from Ben Franklin’s autobiography and pertain to food and eating habits. The one also lends itself to his frugality in that he seems to have been content with plain habits in order to purchase books to further his education. Like Franklin, I am far too appreciative of bread for the good of my waistline. While man (or woman) does not live on bread alone, I think I might come relatively close providing there was an ample supply of butter and cheese to accompany it. I endeavor to be less distanced from Franklin’s philosophy of “eat to live, not live to eat”, as I can quite enjoy common fare so long as it is well prepared, and a healthy lifestyle becomes more important with each passing year, but I do yet have my favorites which I enjoy rather too frequently.

“When about 16 years of age I happened to meet with a book, written by one Tryon, recommending a vegetable diet. I determined to go into it. My brother, being yet unmarried, did not keep house, but boarded himself and his apprentices in another family. My refusing to eat flesh occasioned an inconveniency, and I was frequently chid for my singularity. I made myself acquainted with Tryon’s manner of preparing some of his dishes, such as boiling potatoes or rice, making hasty pudding, and a few others, and then proposed to my brother, that if he would give me, weekly, half the money he paid for my board, I would board myself. He instantly agreed to it, and I presently found that I could save half what he paid me. This was an additional fund for buying books. But I had another advantage in it. My brother and the rest going from the printing-house to their meals, I remained there alone, and, dispatching presently my light repast, which often was no more than a bisket or a slice of bread, a handful of raisins or a tart from the pastry-cook’s, and a glass of water, had the rest of the time till their return for study, in which I made the greater progress, from that greater clearness of head and quicker apprehension which usually attend temperance in eating and drinking.”

“I believe I have omitted mentioning that, in my first voyage from Boston, being becalmed off Block Island, our people set about catching cod, and hauled up a great many. Hitherto I had stuck to my resolution of not eating animal food, and on this occasion I considered, with my master Tryon, the taking every fish as a kind of unprovoked murder, since none of them had or ever could do us any injury that might justify the slaughter. All this seemed very reasonable. But I had formerly been a great lover of fish, and when this came hot out of the frying-pan, it smelt admirably well. I balanced some time between principle and inclination, till I recollected that, when the fish were opened, I saw smaller fish taken out of their stomachs. Then thought I, “If you eat one another, I don’t see why we mayn’t eat you.” So I dined upon cod very heartily, and continued to eat with other people, returning only now and then occasionally to a vegetable diet. So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do.”