Red Potato Harvest of Late June

63 potatoes (about 5 pounds) were harvested 5 days ago using the plastic tote method as taught by Mr. Mike in his Green Meadows class a few months ago.  I used a starter 'soil' mixture of half Nature's Helper and half Georgia red clay as the medium and Stone's Organic Fert. To top dress the stems as they grew, I used the finished, finely sieved soil from the garden's compost bin #3 and applied two additional rounds of very dilute Miracle-Gro.  Plenty of water, loads of sunshine, about two months time and voila! - the photo above!  The spuds range from marble size to fist size, well, my fist, not my husband's.  A simple scrub, a few days drying and we're going to have 31.5 potatoes worth of nutrition.  Why 31.5 and not 63?  Because my garden partner, Ms. Elise, gets half.  Only fair since she baby-sat them as faithfully as Dr. Seuss' Horton the Elephant watched over Mayzie's egg.  

 

Five of the above potatoes will be chosen as seed potatoes for the next crop = $0, my kind of price.  The soil used to grow the potatoes above was returned to Green Meadows' compost bin #2 so, most likely, the next crop will use compost bin #3 soil, also = $0.  This is truly the garden that keeps on giving ............