Spring Garden Potato Crop
You may recall that when I shopped for my spring garden seeds and sets, I also bought three very small seed potatoes to plant in a garbage can. It was a fun project, but I kept forgetting to water it.
I had this old metal garbage can with a rusted out bottom. Well, not completely rusted out, but it did have holes in the very thin, rusted bottom. I placed it near a path in one of the E-beds. Under it went a piece of weed-block fabric, and another piece went inside on top of the rusted bottom - just to be safe and sure no goldenrod or ironweed could grow up into the potatoes. Next, I filled the can about one-third full of mixed soil and old, used potting mix.
I placed the three little seed potatoes on top of that mix and covered them with compost, watered it good to make it settle, then covered them with approximately three more inches of compost. They began to sprout within the week.
In the photos below you will notice a blue barrel (garbage can) standing beside the potato can. In that was stored chopped leaves saved from last autumn. I used the chopped leaves to hill-up the potatoes as the sprouts grew. As they grew, and as the mulch settled and packed down, I just kept adding more, tucking it in around and between them as I worked. The baby potatoes must be kept in the dark so they do not turn green and bitter.
Chopped leaves and water were the only things I added. The plants seemed happy enough, although I knew they were too crowded in there. Three was probably too many to plant, but I feared if I planted only one or two, Murphy's Law would kick in, and they would all die; so three it was. I will post photos below so you can see their progress and end it with a photo of the harvest.
We had some light frosts, the plants finally started dying down. Once they were gone, I went out one day and removed the packed mulch. Feeling as I went, I did find potatoes! Not a huge bountiful harvest, but not a bad return on three small seed potatoes.
More about green and bitter potatoes: All parts of potato plants (Solanum tuberosum) are poisonous except the spud (the part we eat). That is why the "eyes" of potatoes (where stems sprout) should be well dug out when scrubbing and preparing potatoes to cook, to say nothing of the grit that might collect and cling in there (yuk! I hate chewing down on grit in my food).
If the spuds are exposed to light they will turn green and bitter. The green is chlorophyll which can go half an inch deep. You may have noticed green on the edge of a potato chip or the end of one of your French fries. Those will have a bad taste, usually described as bitter. I peel deeply if it looks green and remove all the green I can see. But, to me, that potato still has an unpleasant twang to the flavor.
The chlorophyll greening does not hurt us, but it is an indicator, for it accompanies the formation of natural chemical toxins, alkaloids called solanine and chaconine, similar to strychnine. The two problems are not related, they just happen to occur together, and are both caused by light. That is why potato plant stems must be kept in dark, for the baby spuds form along the growing stalks. The process of covering them with earth, mulch, or both is called hilling or hilling-up.
Potatoes need to be stored where they are dry and in dark, because high temperature, moisture, and old age accelerate greening. Eating a little probably would not hurt us, but do not make a habit of it. Too many green potatoes would cause a stomach ache, and could cause allergic reactions. They interfere with our cell membrane structure and the processing of a nerve transmitter, possibly causing hallucinations and even convulsions. Besides, they just plain taste bad!
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