Need a potato education

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Randy, I look at planting like this..I get a fourth of what I plant. Quarter for the animals, quarter for family, friends, etc., quarter that will not make it and a quarter for ME! LOL..and that's about the way it is.
Last night an o'possom took all my strawberries that I would have picked today. There wasn't many but he took every single ripe one! Guess I should be glad he didn't bother the green ones.
 
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Yep, that's the way it is. LOL My biggest concern in the garden is slugs, but I hardly had any of them last year. With the chickens free-ranging these days I'm hoping for a repeat performance. Once the garden is in though, the chickens will have to stay penned.
 
I don't have a problem with slugs Randy...thank goodness! The problems here are field mice, turkeys, crows, possoms, rabbits, squirrels, bugs and lack of rain! It's not too bad but I still lose that quarter to them here and there!
RJ and I planted about 80 more tomato plants today and I finally got some green Bell Pepper plants too.
I think I'm finished planting. Now for the hard part..waiting for it all to grow.
 
We are back into stormy weather and I haven't tilled yet. But I figure this rain can't last much longer. In a few more days it will already be time for the first spraying of the fruit trees.
 
Randy said:
We are back into stormy weather and I haven't tilled yet. But I figure this rain can't last much longer. In a few more days it will already be time for the first spraying of the fruit trees.
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what do you spray Randy? we missed the dormant oil this winter :(
 
Wow I have been missing tater talk*LOL;)
I bought my sweet potatoes on the 22nd, I stuck them in the jars a few days later.
I just peaked on them, I decided to see if anything happened yet to my surprise, I had 5 roots, can’t see them in pic because my goal was to show how I start them in water jars/glass. And my settings were wrong (duh) ..
I think just my thought ..that a tater needs to feel secure when trying to gain roots, I think that because of several other reasons other then I love sweet potatoes steamed with butter and chives and a touch of sour cream*lol)
Ok...I place (rinsed with water) pea pebbles 1/2 way into a clean jar, I then place the tater with an eye *or more preferably more if I possible*. into the jar while on its side, I then add more pebbles and stand the jar upright and add more pebbles, water with warm water (that has been sitting (preferred but not necessary, the sitting part)
then place it out of direct sun but a warm spot. The tater is securely sitting upright and you can see the roots and when transplanting out doors,,, the roots can be tenderly place about and not crunched in a circle.
Once spread out the plant can take off.
Carefully tilt the jar let the pebbles fall out on a newspaper or something and gently plant your tater..

I usually start this in Feb or March but this year I was too occupied so here you have it. Now as far as slips, I do not get many vines from a tater this way. I think I get 3 tops and they grew over 8feet over winter in the past. that is when I tack them down and keep them attached to the mother, I cut the last tacked one from the mother and the onions cried so I don’t do it anymore..*LOL
Ok...I did try and may have been too soon to cut because some of them that were tacked and rooted died, while the attached ones made little hem hem big taters.
Something isn't correct here but that is how I recall.
Now, Mainie, I got roots in about a week! I think the pebbles have something to do with it.
I hope you tried or try!
Is if rather interesting ,even if you don't get taters you can enjoy a vine indoors, very pretty vine.
Sorry for the blurry pics I didn't know until after I completed the re placing and don't think I should do it over :( but you can still get the idea*lol)

Kale:D
 

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I spray the trees with Sevin. I do the first spraying when the petals all fall from the blooms. That way the bees are all done aqnd safe from the spray. Ten to fourteen days later, I will do the second spraying and a third one ten to fourteen days after that. An occasional coddling moth will make it though that, but not very many. One year I thought that since I hadn't had any insect problems for several years I would forego the spraying. The result was inverted results. Instead of rarely finding an infected fruit, I rarely found one that was not. That year passed with no fruit put up into jars. I won't make that mistake again.
 
I forgot to mention that once I have the sprayer all set up on the tractor, I spray the neighbor's trees too, but they don't have many.
 
My farmer friend would tell me much the same thing, Deb. Sometimes I think I worry more about his crops than he does. He had at least a couple of bad years in a row and I was really afraid of him losing the farm, but then on that next year, the weather and market worked for him and he erased the debt and actually made some money. He is the one that lets me pick blueberries in his fields. The other farmer friend has a roofing business and he farms in addition to that. So he is not totally dependent on the farm. He has been expanding his blueberry production too. The first farmer does not allow U-pick, but contracts with the food industry processors. The second one has U-pick but also does some contract work.
 
You know I am still in hopes of getting enough land to have a small organic farm....at one point Mike thought he would work full time also on it...but it would scare me to have that as our only income...but then I guess mike could do a tannie on the side here and there...
 
It's getting scarey the number of farmers that are loosing their farms. You usually have to have another income to make the farm idea work.
 
Randy said:
I spray the trees with Sevin. I do the first spraying when the petals all fall from the blooms. That way the bees are all done aqnd safe from the spray. Ten to fourteen days later, I will do the second spraying and a third one ten to fourteen days after that. An occasional coddling moth will make it though that, but not very many. One year I thought that since I hadn't had any insect problems for several years I would forego the spraying. The result was inverted results. Instead of rarely finding an infected fruit, I rarely found one that was not. That year passed with no fruit put up into jars. I won't make that mistake again.
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So far we've been lucky I guess, for the most part we get big beautiful apples and plums without having sprayed anything at all for a decade or more. The small apple tree though has developed a lot of "scab" so we wanted to do the dormant oil on that, but you are not supposed to do it if there is a chance it will freeze, and with our wacky weather this winter and spring, it went from freezing at night to hot and the blooms were out in no time flat, so we missed the window again this year!
 
I sure do understand that weather problem. Even with the pesticides you have to have favorable weather with no wind or possibility of rain. You need at least 6 or 7 hours of dry weather for the spray to do any good. During the wet months, a dry day usually means a freezing night.
 
:eek:Ok:confused: I thought we were talking taters*LOL
What did I miss here?:eek::) I wasn't gone that long *lol or was I ?:confused:


Kale:D
 
Once potatoes are planted how long does it take to grow? I have had mine in for a week or so, and still see no signs of life.
 
In about a week started in water in April I think it started to root quicker .
It only had 5 roots,hang in there it will be a while, usually takes months.
Are you starting them in water or soil?
What kind of taters?

Kale
 
Kale said:
:eek:Ok:confused: I thought we were talking taters*LOL
What did I miss here?:eek::) I wasn't gone that long *lol or was I ?:confused:


Kale:D
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Kale, I just wrote a post on another thread and as I moved on to the next one, I realized it had absolutely nothing to do with the thread topic. I am probably the worst one on this forum about staying on topic and I will try and do better.
 
Randy that is the beauty of being friends, we change topics in a heart beat. Hehehehe
 
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