We've dug a few to eat as early potatoes, but ours are still lush and green and blooming, so no major harvest yet. It is usually the first week in July before ours die down and may be even later this year if the potatos come off as late as every thing else did. I still have peas in the garden tho most of what is producing are the MMSs that I mentioned not being fond of. But they are there so I will put up one more batch. The SSS are mostly gone. There are still beets on the south side of the pea trellis and I keep hoping they will make something. This is the worst year I've had for beets in years. Even worse than last year when it got too hot too soon. I don't know what ate the first planting when they were two inches tall, but they sure didn't leave me much...and the second planting was just too late, despite the cool spring.

Madge dug 4 potatoes to eat a few days ago. They were small and she said the ground was very hard. We only planted about 40 or 45 feet of potatoes and they have been bit by frost 3 times, so we are not expecting much from our potatoes.

Yep, the potato harvest has commenced here. So far there have been very good yields. The only problem has been that it is about to exhaust me. I planted 450 pounds of seed potatoes and have been digging furiously over the past few days to get them out of the ground before the heat effects some of them. Some still have quite a bit of green foliage. They will come out of the ground this next week. I planted Red Lasoda, Yukon
Gold, and Pontiac.

Dorothy,

My potatoes sometimes aren't ready until late June or early July, and they are kinda early this year. I really did try to get them in the ground as close to the recommended planting dates (which I don't always manage to do) and have a wide range of types, so it really is just the early ones I was trying to dig. Norkotahs in the regular Norkotah bed still are lush and green, but the ones that were there in the Red Norland bed looked pitiful (and, of course, it was because voles had essentially severed the plant tops from the tubers).

Everything here seems to have accelerated and gotten into a big hurry all of a sudden. Tomatoes are ripening like crazy across a broad range of varieties, and the corn varieties are in a race to see which one can finish up first. The cucumbers are going crazy, so pickling season is about to begin. Maybe the heat has pushed everything along. We have hit 98 degrees twice at our house this week, and my edible podded peas finished up fast back in May after we'd had several days with high temps around 95 degrees, though Sugar Lace II actually held up longer than SSS. Sugar Lace doesn't have much in the way of leaves, though, so even if heat starts causing powdery mildew on other sugar snaps, this variety seems slow to get it.

I wonder if cutworms were getting your beets? That or army worms would be my best guess. I didn't have much trouble with either of them this spring, but lately, every time I pull up something by the roots, there's a big fat cutworm right there in the soil, or pulled up out of the soil when I pulled up the plants. Apparently there are a lot of them around, so I guess my cutworm collars or toothpicks essentially protected the plants earlier.

Larry, I hate it when frost bites back the potatoes. That happens a lot here because we often get hot early, so their foliage grows like crazy, and then we get ridiculously late freezes and they freeze back to the ground. After a few rounds of that, they're too exhausted to produce many tubers. This year, mine only came through the late freezes fine because I spent ridiculous amounts of time covering them up and then uncovering them during all those late cold nights. I feel like some years (and this has been one of them), if I didn't cover up cool-season crops, I wouldn't get any harvest from them. Maybe next year we'll have another year like 2012 when the last freeze was a month or more early.

Scott, No kidding about the exhaustion part. That's an incredible amount of potatoes to dig. Like you, I am in a race now to beat the heat, but I don't think I'll have to work nearly as hard as you are because I didn't plant nearly as many potatoes. I like to leave them in the soil as long as possible, but I worry that the current combination of saturated soil and temperatures topping out near 100 degrees every day cannot be good for them.

Do you have a good place to store them all so you can take them to market over a period of weeks, or do you take them to market ASAP after harvesting them?

I planted at least 8 varieties....all the ones you did, plus a few more. It is so easy to just keep planting more and more in nice cool winter weather, but then you have to pay the piper in June and July when it is hot and it is time to dig. I was going to stop at 5 or 6 varieties but kept finding "just one more" that I wanted to grow.

I thought all my big long potato rows in the main garden wouldn't be ready to dig for a while (though it has been a long time since they bloomed), but then yesterday and today, the potatoes in one area have gone drastically downhill, so I think they are telling me they are done. I may try to dig them later this evening after the current rain shower passes, or maybe tomorrow afternoon or evening.

I have a new garden tool/accessory. It is a beach umbrella you stick in the sand. I can stick it in the ground to make shade while I dig. It could some in really handy during the next week or two of potato digging.

So far, everything has produced well here in my part of southern OK. I don't want to jinx anyone or anything, but if this keeps up, it could be the best harvest overall in years, other than the tree fruit, which did freeze, obviously, during all those late recurring cold nights.

Dawn

Dawn,

I store my potatoes in baskets on shelves in the house. I then sell them over the next couple of months. I was going to dig some more this afternoon but then a rain storm came up and dropped 3/4 inch of rain. It was very welcome. Now I wont have to water for a while. I will begin digging again tomorrow or the day after. I've got sandy soil and it drains quickly. I also have some more intermediate onions to pull. Over the past few days they have begun falling over in significant numbers, so I will pull all of those tomorrow also. Those still standing will get to stay in the garden a while longer and hopefully grow some more. It has shaped up to be a very good onion year. Numerous onions between baseball and softball size. And of course lots of others that are smaller. Overall a good year so far.

Scott, I'm thinking you must have a room full of shelves. After harvest time, I have root crops, in particular, stashed on shelves all over the house. I wish I just had a big empty room that could be the storage room, and if I had it, I'd have it underground like a root cellar. In the fall through spring, I can store a lot in my tornado shelter, but it gets a little too warm in July and August, so I usually don't keep too much in there at this time of the year.

I still have a dozen or so intermediate onions standing, and they still fall over at the rate of 2 or 3 a day.A couple of days ago a lot of them just started falling over like crazy, and since they are in amended clay, I don't leave them in the ground long once they are falling over. Most of the ones left standing are the really big ones, and I have had sizes run from tiny to huge this year. It is bizarre. Usually I get somewhat more consistent results.

I hope next year to plant all the onions and potatoes in the new back garden which has sandy soil. I didn't dare plant root crops back there his year because it had vole tunnels. So far, I haven't had any voles in the back garden, but found some in the front garden while digging potatoes. It is my own fault. I had to choose between deer and voles. When the fence was 4' tall, bobcats jumped it and hunted in the garden, mostly at night, and we never had moles, voles or gophers in the fenced garden. However, deer jumped the 4' tall fence, so we raised it to 8' tall. That keeps out the bobcats, obviously, and the housecats are inside at night, so there is nothing in the garden except (maybe.....) snakes to control the voles. So, I need to figure out how to solve the vole issue in a fenced garden that doesn't have cats in it at night.

It is a good year so far. I hate to jinx us, but it possibly could end up being a great year if a little rain will fall fairly regularly.

Dawn

We've been digging potatoes -as we need them- for about a week, now. Nothing to brag about wrt yields, though. Two to four decent sized taters with some little ones under each plant.

Started our first experiment with fall potatoes, too. A dozen Russets planted, so far. Mixed a bit more compost into those beds, this time.

Found my first hornworm ever (this is only my second year gardening though). It was on the potatoes that hubby and I dug up this afternoon. My son thought it was awesome, even more so after I told him it turns into the sphinx moth he likes so much. I tried to get hubby to leave the potato plant he was on, but he wouldn't, so I just propped the plant he was on up against a tree.

Hornworms are eating machines. They immediately get picked and fed to the chickens or stepped on here. I like sphinx moths, but I dislike hornworms even more. They are not endangered in any way so I kill every hornworm I encounter. They can strip a pepper plant or small tomato plant in nothing flat.

Tara, we grow oodles of night-blooming flowers, so our flower beds are full of sphinx moths at night. I enjoy watching them. Sphinx moths are gentle and just want to be left alone to do their thing.

Scott, If I were a market grower, I'd likely share your sentiment. I totally understand why some people kill hornworms.

I rarely have hornworms on any of the desirable food-producing plants in my veggie garden, likely because I grow so many flowering plants they like. Or, possibly it is because I grow some companion plants with my tomato plants that repel them. Since I started interplanting borage and basil with tomatoes, I almost never see hornworms on tomato plants. I grow too many tomatoes and peppers anyhow, so even if I found a hornworm on one of those plants, I'd just move it elsewhere. I am sure I 'd feel differently if I was a market grower or if I had a small family garden which had only 3 tomato plants and 3 pepper plants.

I was going to dig more potatoes today but it is raining and likely will be too muddy. It sure is good to have the rain even if it falls at a time that is inconvenient in terms of harvesting from the garden.

Dawn

We have harvested all of our red potatoes so far. They weren't quite ready, but hubby doesn't like his red potatoes to get too big. I only planted about 5 lbs of seed potatoes and got plenty in return. The eating sized ones are being eaten, the larger ones have been turned into hashbrowns, plenty have been parboiled, vacuum-sealed, and frozen, and we've had plenty to give away to neighbors, friends, and family.

We decided to wait a few weeks for the yellows to let them grow a little more. Mmmm...I love harvest time - spent all day yesterday putting up blueberries, potatoes, and peas. Picked the first zucchini yesterday, have had a few delicious onions, beans and tomatoes should start soon...my freezer is getting full and I love it!

So far we have only dug 1 row of 5. nothing huge so far but looks like it will be a decent harvest.

Pulled all the onions just before the rain sunday, Some of all sizes and was happy with the outcome since the plants were pretty sad when planted.

pulled about 20 hornworms off the tomatoes sunday also. We were gone to bluegrass festival over the weekend so the got a pretty good start.

Robert, That's a bunch of hornworms. The only hornworms I've found haven't been on tomatoes or potatoes....only on flowers.

Dawn

Dug ours last night. DAd jut puts and old plow that use to be pulled by a mule behind the tractor and that is how we dig. We only had 2 short rows but they produced very well. Best we've had in a while. Some of them were sprouted. Dad always makes the call on when they are ready since they are in his garden. Hope we didnt wait too late. ejm135 tell me how you freeze yours if you dont mind. Was thinking of canning some. We do not have a very good place to put them and I usually lose a lot to rot. Decided this year to put some of them up. Sheila

I had better go dig a few of mine, they don't look quite ready but the moisture we have had this year I may have some sprouting also. I only have (2) 22 ft, rows and I have had a lot of frost damage. The vines look fine now but that was not the case earlier in the year.

Larry

P.S. Sheila, I think I may have worked with your mother.

Mine are not good this year. I dug under 2 plants and this is what I got. I was also surprised at how dry and hard the ground is.

Larry

Larry

Larry my mom worked at rheem in ft smith. Ella McMillin was her name

Sheila, your mom was a very sweet and pretty lady. I think she started at Rheem in the mid 70's. She sure was crazy about horses and her family.

Ya'll have me wondering if I should dig potatoes or wait..choices choices.

Bre, I am in the same boat. I dug 5 plants in the north garden, it is wetter, and a few had split. The south garden needs watering, but I am afraid it may damage what few potatoes I do have out there.

I could not believe how dry the south garden was, even after having all the rain we have had this spring. I have my irrigation tubes out. I can only water on even days and it looks like tomorrow will be a good time to hook the tubes up.

Larry- I can't believe your that dry either! Is it not suppose to rain your way tomorrow? We have a chance for rain here all day, and your really not that far from me.

I planted potatoes in containers this year, and I thought you weren't suppose to dig them until fall, or until the green tops turn and wilt. I have one container that is doing wonderfully, and the other, well not so much. I might just go dig around in it and see what I come up with.

Thank you Larry. She was a 5 ft 1\2 in stick of dynamite. Hated being at rheem. One of my blessings was she died doing one of the things she loved most in the world riding horses.

Larry, Your potatoes look nice. Maybe they are not as big as you'd like, but there's plenty of them.

I worked outside today from 6:30 a.m. to 8:40 p.m. and digging potatoes was just one of several chores to which I devoted a lot of time. It was mostly cloudy and fairly cool for June--our temp topped out at 88 and our heat index at 96, and while that is warm, I suspect it will be a lot warmer by the time I'm able to dig the late varieties.

In one part of the garden, some of the potatoes were about to sprout and others had rotted, so I am glad I didn't wait any longer to dig. My garden has had far too much rain in the last 5 or 6 weeks but it likely will stop raining now that summer is almost here. I've dug all the lower parts of the potato beds, so don't think any of the others at the higher end of the garden are in danger of rotting or sprouting.

Bre, In our climate, potatoes are a cool-season crop planted about 4 weeks prior to your last frost in spring. They grow and then set tubers and size them up while soil temperatures are below 85 degrees. Once the soil temperature hits 85 degrees, tuber initiation ceases. That's why we plant so early, and we do have to protect the foliage from late frosts....it is so we can get a good yield before the temperatures shut down tuber initiation. If we wait until it is so warm that the foliage never is at risk of freezing, then the soil temperatures get too hot before the plants can make poatoes. The foliage of spring-planted potatoes will turn yellow and start to die when the plants are mature and the potatotes are ready to harvest. . Most potato varieties that we plant here mature in 90-120 days. You can harvest potatoes at any size you want as they are usable and tasty even when small.

So, depending on where you are in OK, you plant potatoes in February or March and harvest, more or less, in June or July. (The OSU-recommended planting dates for potatoes in spring are Feb 15 - Mar 10).

For fall, you plant potatoes about 3 months before you first killing freeze of autumn so that the plants will have time to grow and set/size up tubers. In a year when the first fall freeze is later than usual, potatoes do really well. Of course, some years the first fall freeze is extra early.....but that's life here in OK.

Dawn

I planted potatoes in wasted space between my cattle panels. They sprawled more than usual, of course, and the potato beetles were horrible this year. I have been away for home a lot this Spring so they have had NO care. I didn't water once, but we had a lot of rain. I didn't hill them, but only 3 or 4 worked their way to the surface. The Yukon Gold and the reds were ready to dig and I dug the others because they were in the way and because they had suffered 'enough' from the insects. The sign had fallen off the reds when I bought them, but I think they were Norland. The others were Kennebec and a few pantry potatoes to finish out the row.

As usual, Yukon Gold did really well, and since it is really our favorite, I will probably only plant those next year.

I had onions in a raised bed that fell over and never did straighten up again and they were also shaded by another crop, so I took those out yesterday. The onions were small, but usable. The other onions are still in the ground and have not fallen over, and are doing much better.

The picture is my entire potato crop except for what we ate for lunch yesterday. LOL I don't have a good place to store them, so that is as many as I can use up anyway.

Here is a link that might be useful: New Potatoes

Carol, That's a nice harvest. I think all your rain turned into potatoes. I am still digging and harvesting, and feel like I'll never finish, but it is nice to have a good crop to dig. I'll be preserving lots of them because it will be more than we can eat before they start sprouting.

I dug this morning from 7 to 11:30 a.m. and then the heat drove me indoors. When I came inside, our heat index was 101 degrees. I've been in a couple of hours and am getting ready to go back out and dig the rest of the second big raised bed. After that, I'll only have two small raised beds of taters left---one is 4' x 12' and the other is 4' x 10'.

It remains a superb potato year here. In a good year when the rain doesn't fall at the wrong time and make them rot like it did last year, nothing else gives me such a huge payoff for so little work over the lifetime of the plant. Plant 'em, forget 'em and harvest 'em. Well, except in a bad potato bug year, and this was a bad potato bug year, but a couple of rounds of concentrated hand-picking too care of that.

My problem this year is that everything is ready to harvest all at once, making it hard to get it all done. I'm about to go back outside and see how long I last. I have a big beach umbrella I can stick in the ground to shade me while I work, and that makes the working conditions a lot more comfortable.

Dawn

How do you preserve your potatoes Dawn. Dont seem to use things frozen as well as canned but still considering both methods

Well, we finished digging the 2013 potato crop today. I was so glad when I got to that last potato plant. The past few days have just about worn me down. I'm not sure whether I want to plant 450 pounds of seed potatoes again, unless I have a tractor with a digger to harvest them.

It was very important to get all of them dug since the heat appeared to be setting in. (We've been digging for almost three weeks.) A point of caution for anyone who has not dug theirs yet, we had a few potatoes which had gone rotten from the heat. Not a lot, but enough to be aggravating. It makes digging that much harder when you have to examine every potato for damage. Most of the time though we could go by whether the soil clung to the potato more than it should. If it did we looked at the potato closer. If the skin was smooth and the soil slid off easily the potato was fine. A few of the plants which were still quite green had rotten potatoes under them. So, I would recommend digging any remaining potatoes in the next day or so. We've got some hot temperatures coming and I would not risk it just to gain a few more days growth.

Now to finish the onion harvest. I've still got Candy and Super Star to pull. The Super Stars have been falling over in numbers every day, and I have been pulling them. The Candys are just now beginning to fall over significantly. I have quite a bit of grass that has come up in them since the rains set in and I think they are keeping the soil and onions cool. So, in this instance having a few weeds has helped. Many of the onions are softball sized.

It has turned out to have been a very good onion and potato year. Of course the multiple mornings I had to get up before dawn and spray the frost off of the potatoes and onions are now fading memories. We've had a good harvest, but we have had to work for it though. Still, I feel blessed and am thankful.

Scott, thanks for the heads up. I will check mine tomorrow. I dug some today for my son and for my parents and did notice that the soil did stick to some potatoes more, but I did not check them close enough to see if there was any damage.

Borderokie, I answered the potato-preserving question on your thread about preserving potatoes. I freeze quite a lot from the garden and usually fill up three freezers in a good year. I can a lot, but don't particularly care for canned potatoes, and I dehydrate a lot because my convection oven has a built-in food dehydration mode.

Scott, I found a few rotten ones yesterday and today, and that almost never happens. Like you observed, they were under plants that still had plenty of green and which I met have left in the ground a bit longer, but the heat is making me paranoid. I've been digging as fast as I can by hand, and only have one raised bed of potatoes left to go. I'm 90% done so I am feeling like the finish line is in sight. After carefully hand-digging each bed, I still felt like I was missing some taters, so took my little Mantis cultivator and ran it down the rows and it unearthed quite a few potatoes I had missed, and it didn't cut up many of them either. That's the first time I've used the Mantis that way....to sort of glean my own rows after I thought I was already done.

I have been harvesting Candy and Superstar this week too, and took out the last few today. Their necks were soft but they hadn't fallen over yet. However, with all the others harvested, I was worried these last 8 or 10 onions would sunburn so I went ahead and yanked them out. They did really well this year and gave me the biggest onions of the year. We had quite a few that were softball sized. All the other onions had a wide variety of sizes, but the Candy and Superstar were more consistently big. I had volunteer Laura Bush petunias pop up in the onion rows where Candy and Superstar were growing and let them stay there, and those were the biggest onions, so maybe next year, I'll let more volunteer petunias stay in the onion rows.

While it is true that the onion and potato harvest are really good, I still haven't forgotten all the trouble involved in dealing with those late frosts, but I'm trying to forget them. We have had to work hard for the good harvest, but at least the hard work paid off.So far, knock on wood, the squash, sweet corn and cucumbers are looking really good too, as are the tomatoes and peppers. I think at the rate we're going, it is going to be an exhausting summer, but in a good way.

Now, I'm racing like crazy to get all the corn harvested. I have 5 varieties and I staggered the planting dates as well as I could (and some varieties are separated from others by either distance or barrier plantings or both), but in that way that nature has of ignoring the best-laid plants, all the later plantings have just about caught up with the earlier ones, so as soon as I finish harvesting one variety, it is time to move on to the next. For a long time, you could look at the size of each planting and know which one was planted first, second, third, etc. and then they all shot up overnight and started tasseling and silking and I've never seen corn grow so fast before. Not sure if it is all the rain since May or all the heat, but it is as if the 5 varieties are racing one another to the finish line.

I just hope some rain falls occasionally. One thing I haven't missed at all is all the irrigation. I've hardly had to water at all since mid-May, and then only to get seeds to sprout or to water in new transplants. Our last water bill was "normal", which was nice after the way they had skyrocketed the last two summers.

:Larry, The way I found the first icky rotten potato was I picked it up to brush the dirt off of it and it pretty much collapsed into a gooey mess in my hand. It was just gross. After that, I watched the sticky soil on potatoes more carefully.

Dawn

ok a variety question. We have grown pontiacs for years. This year we added la sodas. Really couldnt tell a lot of difference in them. (Cant remember which row was which) Want to do some Yukon Golds heard they do not produce very well. Any info from those of you who have tried them?

Yukon Gold produces fine for me. I am not a big potato producer, but the 2 trays on the left in the picture above are Yukon Gold and they were grown in less than 18 feet of space with NO care except to plant and harvest. I love them for potato salad and I think they are very good baked. As I mentioned above, I may only plant Yukon Gold in the future.

I planted Yukon Gold last year and they did not do as well as the 2 other kinds I planted. I want to try them again because I really like their taste.

On a side note, what is the best keeping potato, and do have to do anything to them. I think I can remember from childhood that sometimes people would place a little lime on their potatoes.

Dangit! You guys made me paranoid. I reckon I'm digging taters, tomorrow...

Slowpoke, I've read that Pontiacs are the best keepers, but I'm no expert. I just plant 'em and dig up.

Red LaSoda is very like Red Pontiac because it is an improved version of Red Pontiac, and I believe the improvement is that it has better disease resistance. You likely would notice a difference in them only in bad disease years.

Yukon Gold is about as good as it gets when it comes to potatoes, both in flavor and productivity, though they are not the largest potatoes I grow. They produce fine for me and I grow them every year. This year they produced around 8 potatoes per plant and none of the potatoes were very large or very small.....just a good consistent medium size. If someone said they don't produce well, I'd wonder if they have grown them in poor growing conditions. Any potato can produce poorly in poor conditions in any given year...like too much hot weather early or too little moisture.

If I wanted to grow only one potato (it would be a hard choice) I'd grow either Yukon Gold or Kennebec.

Larry, Kennebec produces loads of big potatoes that store very well and are very versatile. It might be that they just store a little better because they are a bit later than most other varieties so are dug later in the summer and are put into storage later. Purple Majesty and Peruvian Purple also store for a long time.

The ideal storage for potatoes is at 36 degrees with high humidity and good air circulation. Cold storage outside a refrigerator is best, but almost impossible to achieve in our climate. Some people store them in an old refrigerator, maybe one kept in a garage or basement or something, but storing them in the refrigerator makes their starch convert to sugar more quickly. Most people (in cooler climates than ours) can store potatoes in a basement or cellar at 50-60 degrees and have them last for many months---maybe 8 months or more. I get a very wide variation in storage results from year to year, and generally am thrilled if I can get the taters to store for 4-6 months just by keeping them in a single layer in a cool, dark place.

I asked an old-timer about storing potatoes with lime and he said it was to keep them from rotting in storage. Because lime can cause digestive upset, if you store them this way be sure to scrub the lime off the potatoes before cooking them.