Today a private topic, which should happen on a private blog^^. I grew potatoes in my family's garden a few months ago. I tried growing potatoes for the first time more than 20 years ago, primarily to see how potatoes grow. This time, however, due to the increased prices for vegetables.
A few days ago, I was able to harvest potatoes from my family's garden for the first time. We tried it out on a small patch against the neighbor's wall. Instead of using extra seed potatoes, I used the skin of potatoes that had already sprouted.
The timing
We didn't expect much at the beginning because the potato skin itself wasn't much, but in the end it grew quite well, it took about 3 months (I haven't counted the exact days now), I only read something online about the end of August as the harvest time, well, then I let it grow until the last day. A few days ago I saw that the plants were already dying, at least it looked like they wouldn't grow any more. Another reason to start harvesting now.
The harvest
At first I pulled out a few plants and then carefully loosened the soil with the small yellow garden hoe to find the potatoes and there they were, big and small potatoes, just waiting to come out.
On the small 1m x 0.5m field, I harvested approx. 3kg of potatoes after 5-10 minutes. That's not a lot. But if I wanted to eat them on my own, let's say 1 kg per week, I would have enough for 3 weeks. If you're on your own, that works too,
Initially I estimated it at 5kg, my later estimate in the video was around 2-3kg, when weighed it came out at 3kg 🙂
Here is the video of the harvest.
Self-sufficiency from your own garden
The big advantage of having a garden is that you can grow almost anything you want. In recent years, we've mainly grown tomatoes and cucumbers. Unfortunately, onions and carrots didn't work out.
I think it's important, especially in times of rising food costs, not to mention all the health issues, to take care of the cultivation yourself if time permits. Well, the actual effort is the preparation of the field, then watering every few days (the effort here, however, clearly depends on the geographical location) and occasionally removing weeds that have grown and then exercising patience.
The big advantage of growing your own food is that you know exactly where it comes from. Growing your own food also gives you a certain independence, regardless of whether it's rising prices in the supermarket or supply bottlenecks.
And apart from that, for me as a web developer who often sits at the computer for long periods of time, gardening like this is also a pleasant balance and I really enjoyed harvesting the potatoes.
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