Spud Surprise

This year we decided to try growing potatoes. We dug up a space on the edge of the "transition area" between the vegetable garden and the prairie. We planted half of it with black beans and half with potatoes with the idea we would trade places each year for some crop rotation. We planted two 12 foot rows with three kinds of potatoes; Yukon Golds, Red Thumb fingerlings, and Red Pontiacs. We wanted to see if we could dry land farm them, meaning grow them without irrigation. We'd been told that they would keep better if grown that way. So we dug our trenches, faithfully hilled them every couple weeks, and kept our fingers crossed. All went well until about a month ago when Paul started to see vole holes around the potato patch. (Remember those nasty voles? see earlier post) My heart sunk. I didn't even want to go out there and look. But, today was the day to harvest the spuds so I had to go see if there were even any potatoes left. When I saw the holes in the potato patch itself, I wasn't too hopeful. I started with the fingerlings. There were many, many half-eaten small red potatoes coming up in my shovel. I was getting more depressed. However, I began to find more and more uneaten ones so I kept digging. The Yukon Golds were nearly untouched. The Red Pontiacs were in pretty good shape, too, although there were more of them with little tooth marks and parts gone. When all was said and done, we ended up with about 40 pounds of whole, lovely potatoes! They are now stored in the dark, cool basement waiting to be eaten...this time by us!