It’s time to harvest potatoes for the winter. I will update this post throughout the harvest season.
Let’s get started!
Yesterday I spent half the day doing potatoes! When we picked them the dirt was wet, so I let them dry for a day and wiped as much dirt off as I could. I then placed them in boxes, trying not to stack the potatoes too much, and those that are stacked have air flow so they do not rot.
The potatoes that didn’t dry as much and stayed muddy, or have a bit of blight or something of the sort went into the sink to get washed. The potatoes I washed will get cooked.
So far we have almost 22 pounds of potatoes ready to cure so we can have them for the winter and almost 12 pounds to cook. So far this summer, we have eaten 10 pounds of potatoes.
I often think about the early settlers and even those in medieval times and how they needed a garden to be able to provide vegetables through the summer and have enough during the winter months to simply survive. They did not have access to store bought food like we do today. They needed to plan. They needed to decide what they were going to grow, plant those seeds, work hard through the summer to have beautiful gardens that they could eat from, and then work just as hard in the fall to harvest the garden and store as much as they could by drying, placing in the attic or root cellar to keep during the winter and even preserve and can.
It was much the same during the 1940s when the government encouraged Victory Gardens. Front yards, were turned into gardens while parks and green spaces, golf courses and more were turned into community gardens. Gardening has always been important.
We go through potatoes the most. So that’s the vegetable we are focusing on growing more of this year.
How much do you need to plant to be able to have potatoes all winter long? The best way to determine how much you need to grow to feed your family is to keep a gardening journal and record what you planted (potatoes along with any other vegetables) and how much of each vegetable was planted, how many pounds you harvested and how long it lasted before you ran out. That’s what I plan on doing this year.
For potatoes, it’s recommended to plant 15 plants per person. Basically what we planted in just our garden boxes in our backyard is supposedly enough for two people. Some potato varieties will yield a lot more than others. Some varieties we can harvest about 10 to 15 potatoes per plant, and some only 5 to 8 potatoes. From 6 hills, we harvested almost 33 pounds of potatoes — some varieties like Cerisa give more potatoes except they’re smaller, compared to Warba which gives less but larger.
It’s suggested to have 1/2 pound of potatoes per person per week. I’m counting 40 weeks from September to the first week of June. That would be roughly 20 pounds per person. Doesn’t sound like much to be honest. Even if it’s 1 pound per person per week, that would be 40 pounds of potatoes per person for that same time frame which still doesn’t seem like much.
During WWII rationing, each person was allotted 5 pounds of potatoes per person per week. That would be 200 pounds of potatoes per person which sounds a bit much. When we did 1940s Days, 5 pounds was enough for my family per week and sometimes we had leftover potatoes. With this, I’m guessing we would need at least 200 pounds of potatoes for my family for the whole winter.
We still have a lot of potatoes at my folks’ to harvest plus all the potatoes we are growing here on our city homestead.
I am interested in seeing how many potatoes we actually harvest this year.
Here’s a few we harvested to eat August 5. I did not weigh these.
I will update our potato harvest as we dig up the potatoes. I’ll break down our harvest here:
August 11 — harvested 32 pounds 13.19 ounces and of this, 21 pounds 13.9 ounces are being cured for the winter and 10 pounds 15.29 ounces will be cooked.
Here’s the potato patch at my folks’ — there’s something so peaceful about gardening here.
August 28 we harvested a few from the backyard.
September 6 we began harvesting the potatoes at my folks’ — this potato patch will be done this week!!
This bunch here is 13.25 pounds and altogether we harvested 32.75 pounds this evening.
September 9, we harvested 24.5 pounds of the Bintje potatoes and 20 pounds of Cerisa. That’s 44.5 pounds harvested tonight.
September 10 – we began harvesting the potatoes in our backyard this morning. The plants have dried up which means they’re ready to harvest. We picked 31 pounds of Queen Anne potatoes. The Warba potatoes did not yield much and were mostly rotten.
Then this evening we harvested more at my folks’ – we picked 23.25 pounds of an assortment of white potatoes and 31 pounds of Cerisa. That’s 54.25 pounds this evening.
This evening it had cooled off enough that we decided to harvest one section of potatoes in the dark!! We picked 18 pounds of Red Apple potatoes.
September 11 we harvested 27.5 pounds and 30 pounds of Bintje and Yukon Gold.
September 12 was another busy day of harvesting potatoes!! We finished harvesting our potato patch at my folks’ this evening.
Then we harvested another section of potatoes in our backyard garden. We harvested 20 pounds of Cerisa. We started the Melody potatoes but only got one pound so far.
September 15 was another harvest day!! Today we harvested the Red Emmalie potatoes. We got quite a few actually – 25 pounds. These produced really well and are quite large. We have never grown this variety before so I’m interested to see what they taste like!
September 18 we finally finished the potato harvest. It was such a beautiful sunny day – was perfect to work in the garden! Yukon Gold never seem to grow well for us. They’re split, some have blight and overall not very good. There are some that are quite large and are perfectly good to keep, which is great. I won’t plant this variety next year. Out of 6 hills, we got 8 pounds – 3 potatoes weighed 1 pound each!! Not too bad! We had 2 hills of Melody potatoes from my daughter’s garden bed which yielded 4.25 pounds which is actually good!
That’s the potato harvest. The grand total!?! We harvested 227 pounds from our potato patch at my folks’ and 89 pounds from our backyard plus whatever we ate through the summer. That’s a final total of 316 pounds of potatoes!
I’m estimating for 40 weeks (that’s the from the first week in September to first week in June) we would need 200 pounds of potatoes, allowing us 5 pounds per week. We will see what happens and if this is a sufficient amount. I’ll keep you updated later this winter to see where we are at!!
Did you harvest potatoes this summer?
