Massive new potatoes

Freshly dug Chieftain and Yukon Gold potatoes

Our first potatoes of the year are HUGE, some of the biggest potatoes I’ve grown by far. I guess they really liked the rain. First dug: Yukon Gold and Chieftain. As usual, the harvest method is as manual as it gets: crawling along the rows, pulling up the plants, and scrabbling around by hand. More fun in the mud…

2 thoughts on “Massive new potatoes”

  1. My grandfather always used a pitchfork for digging potatoes.  Insert the tines at an angle well below where the potatoes should be, leverage down on the handle, and up pops the potatoes on top of the tines.  Shake a few times to shake off the excess dirt.  I haven’t tried this myself since all of my potatoes have been grown in a pot, but I do remember watching him and my uncles dig the new potatoes every year.

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  2. Talking about fork for digging, Johnny’s have a special 10 tines broadfork specifically designed for digging root crop.  At nearly 200$, it is a tad pricey and might be hard to justify on a tiny farm, though.

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