Harvesting the Dark Red Norland Potatoes

Whew! It has been a busy week. I am looking forward to this weekend and spending some quality time in the garden. There is a lot of harvesting, cleanup, and fall crop planting that needs to be accomplished.

First on the list is harvesting the mid-season potatoes:

Two varieties of potatoes were planted on May 2, 2010 in the east garden, Dark Red Norland, a mid-season variety, and Kennebec, a late season variety.

5.5-pounds Dark Red Norland seed potatoes were planted in three rows that are 8-feet long. Almost 15-pounds of new potatoes were dug a few pounds at a time beginning July 4th as needed for consuming right away. Two rows were allowed to mature. It’s been about 2-weeks since the foliage has died and I stopped watering:

I also noticed the last time I dug some potatoes that the skins were much thicker and the red color no longer rubbed off easily. They were ready to be harvested.

I decided to dig them up early this morning while it was still cool and slightly overcast. I dug them by hand so I could avoid damaging them with a shovel or digging fork:

I filled my little garden cart. It's on wheels and can be easily moved around:

I followed Laura’s method for storing potatoes at The Modern Victory Garden website. I’ve been saving boxes and shredded paperwork a little at a time for this process:

I weighing the harvest in batches as I went along and saved out the small potatoes to use for seed next year:

 
Two paper boxes of Dark Red Norland Potatoes for storing and about 5-pounds of seed potatoes were boxed up in a smaller box. These will be stored in the coolest part of the basement. Some bite sized potatoes will be roasted up for dinner tonight:

The final tally for the Dark Red Norland Potatoes for the year is 46-pounds. I can't wait to see what the Kennebec Potatoes will amount to. So far I am very pleased with the result of my first year growing potatoes.