New Growing Season Begins!

Well the first order for the growing season has gone in ...

I had a $25 coupon from Gurneys.com (I swore I was never going to order from them again but here I go again) and it was enough to not only cover my product but my shipping as well (at least that's the way things stand now)

I decided that if they were going to pay for it, then I was going to grow something I've been itching to try but didn't want to invest money in, in case it were a flop

POTATOES

I ordered two varieties

Purple Viking - an early tuber with a healthy spreading action ... They are supposed to be about 3 inches in diameter and produce about 10 times their weight .... I got 2# which was the smallest I could order

Dakota Pearl - these are a main season potato and are supposed to be a heavy producer - about 15-20# for every pound planted. they are supposed to grow upward and it sounds like they like to open pollenate - I don't know if this is normal for potatoes ... I wonder if they are like corn, where if you accidentally get cross pollination instead of getting sweet corn you end up with "field corn"?

Wonder what you get with potatoes?

I would have tried sweet potatoes but I wasn't sure I would have a long enough growing season - and they were over twice the price of the white potatoes!

We have a few ideas of how to grow them - from big tubs where we can build up mulch around them and make even more tubers, to paper sacks, to raised beds, to straight planting into the ground ... I'm even considering a wheelbarrow configuration so I can start them in our greenhouse and wheel the cart in and out if the weather starts to get too cold during the day (like it did last summer) - since they only need 3-5" of soil to start it shouldn't be too heavy if I don't make the run too big ... Of course once he mulch starts to build up this might be impractical

It's an experiment - which I will be spending a minimum amount on