April and May are the best time to plant potatoes in the garden. You will start by cutting the seed potatoes in to slices that contain at least 3 to 4 eyes. Let the slices air dray overnight before planting then in the garden. Planting the sliced seeds is done by opening trench in the soil about 4" deep, place the seed in the bottom of the trench with the eye up, spacing about 12" apart. Cover with soil. Make sure that there is moisture in the soil before covering. When the vines get to be about 5 to 6 inches tall start pulling soil up from between the rows top "hill" up the vines. All of the potatoes that will grow in your garden will be between the planted seed and the top of the ground. 10 to 12 pounds of seed potatoes will plant about a 100 foot row. You will have to keep an eye out for the Colorado Potato Beetle. This is about the only insect that will cause damage to your potato vines. When they show up you can dust the vines with Sevin garden dust to keep them under control.
When you visit our store for the purchase of your seed potatoes, look at the two charts that are there showing how to slice your seed spud and how to plant and hill up the vines as they grow.
I have an organic garden. We have fruit trees and I was wondering what you have that can be sprayed on fruit trees to prevent or control pest that is organic or environmental friendly?
Controlling insects organically in fruit trees is one of the most difficult garden task to do. With out knowing what kind of fruit trees you have it is very hard to recommend products that will control all of the insects that attack fruit trees in our area. One of the most important items you can do is to learn about the insect that will attack your trees. Stone fruit will have different insect that the pear and apples. When learning about the insects, that will include the time of year that them come out to bother the trees and fruit. By learning the life cycle of the insect you can target the treatment for that time of year only.
Aphids are the first insects that comes out. When learning about borers, we have three types that come out at different times of the year. Coddling moths that cause worms in apples appear in mid to late May with more than one generation each season.
Your arsenal of sprays for organic control should include horticultural spray oils, Thuricide(Bt), wettable sulfur, insecticidal soaps, Coddling moths traps, and if you can find it a product made from Kaolin clay. This clay is fast becoming the number one organic spray for orchards as it protects your crop from a wide number of insects including the coddling moths
How do you grow Potatoes in the garden? Do you take a seed Potato cut in fourths?