Posted on August 24, 2015 @ 11:09:00 AM by Paul Meagher
Yesterday I harvested some potatoes I planted. Here are some nice red potatoes I harvested.
This was my first time harvesting the potatoes this year so I was interested to see what type of yield I would be getting. The red potatoes above are a red-skinned varietal called "Red Chieftain" that I've had success with in the past and they appear to be yielding good again this year.
The concept of return on investment applies to assessing your potato harvest. When I plant a potato seed, I eventually want to know how many potatoes will I get back, how big will they be, and how many of the bunch will be good or worth eating. The blue-flesh potatoes I planted for the first time this year have not done well so far. I'm only getting back a couple of small potatoes, almost equivalent in volume to the potato seed I planted. They might still grow a bit more but if they don't do better, then I'm looking at a 0% or negative return on investment for planting blue potatoes. Red potatoes, however, are a different story and I'll probably continue planting Red Chieftains next year again because they are reliable producers. I'm getting a 500% to 600% return on my potato investment for Red Chieftains.
I planted more potatoes than I'll need this year. Here are the two potato strip tills I planted. I planted around 200 lbs of potatoes in these strip tills.
I'm still not sure what I'll do with all the potatoes.
My wife's grandmother grew alot of potatoes and people often came to her house to get fed because they knew she was rich in potatoes. You were considered well off if you had a good store of potatoes. I'll feel pretty rich as well if I go into the fall with a bin full of potatoes.
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