Harvest potatoes more youthful or mature.
Mature, full-size potatoes are referred to as maincrop potatoes. Maincrop potatoes are forever cured and stored for later use. Maincrop potatoes are ready for harvest when quite a lot of essentially the most good foliage has withered
Small, round, immature potatoes are forever referred to as “new potatoes.” New potatoes are usually eaten pores and pores and skin and all. New or early potatoes may also be harvested for table use at any time.
When to Harvest Potatoes
- Harvest large, mature, maincrop potatoes about 15 weeks after planting when the foliage begins to die once more.
- Harvest new potatoes when crops begin to flower and for another 2 to a few weeks, starting about 60 to 70 days after planting.
- It’s absolute best imaginable to harvest potatoes on a warmth, dry day after a few days of no rain or a cloudy day will do.
- Some potato varieties bloom overdue or do not bloom. If you do not see plant lifestyles 65 to 75 days after planting, check out as regards to the ground of the plant for developing tubers. Potato tubers form on underground stems referred to as stolons. Potato stolons are maximum incessantly 12 to 18 inches long; so developing tubers could be inside of that circumference of the plant.
Harvest New Potatoes
- To harvest new potatoes gently elevate the plant at the side of your palms or a garden trowel or hand multi-pronged garden fork. As you elevate the plant, the surrounding soil and mulch will fall away.
- Take as many new potatoes as you wish to have then set the plant once more in place and corporate the soil so that the plant and remaining tubers can broaden on. (Do not move away the plant out of the soil for long; the sun can hurt exposed roots and tubers.)
- As an alternative, you are able to elevate a complete plant for harvest and move away the neighboring crops undisturbed. The potatoes you permit throughout the ground will broaden to become your number one crop—your mature tuber crop, and the plant will produce new potatoes as smartly.
- If the plant is emerging in hills of very free soil, mulch or straw, you are able to simply ease your hand into the tuber zone and remove new potatoes.
Harvest Primary Crop Potatoes
- Mature or maincrop potatoes could be ready for harvest 2 to a few weeks after crops turn yellow and die once more—about 100 to 110 days after planting.
- Vines will each die once more naturally or, to spur harvest, you are able to damage off the stems at ground level to stop growth.
- Between the time the plant dies once more and harvest, do not water potato crops. A dry length will allow skins to “set” or harden which is very important for long storage.
- Harvest mature potatoes the usage of a spading fork. Art work from the edge of the planting row or bed inwards.
- Insert your fork 10 to 18 inches transparent of the plant stem. Loosen and turn the soil moderately so the potatoes you elevate are not damaged.
- Lots of the crop could be on the equivalent level inside of essentially the most good 4 to 6 inches of the soil. If you know how deep the tubers are emerging, you are able to use a garden spade to spice up the entire hill.
- If the potato plant does now not die once more for the reason that tubers mature, decrease the plant off at soil level two weeks previous to you want to harvest the tubers.
- It is best to dig potatoes when the soil is dry. If the weather has been rainy, wait a few days until the soil dries to begin out your harvest.
Drying and Curing Potatoes
- Let harvested potatoes sit throughout the garden for an hour or so that you can dry. Since the tubers and soil dry, the soil will drop transparent of the tubers. If the soil does now not drop away, use a soft brush to remove soil from the tubers. Do not wash merely harvested potatoes; washing potatoes will shorten their storage life.
- Newly harvested potatoes do not have tough pores and pores and skin so take care of them moderately to keep away from bruising which can lead to rot.
- Set the tubers on a show or lattice where they are able to dry for an hour. For those who occur to leave them longer, set them in a dark, dry place where it is a bit humid.
- Maincrop potatoes that you want to store should be allowed to “cure” for one to two weeks after harvest. Curing will allow cuts, nicks, and bruises to heal.
- Potatoes with deep cuts or bruises are absolute best imaginable used right away and now not stored.
Store Potatoes
- New potatoes could be most flavorful if eaten nearly right away after digging.
- Store number one crop potatoes in a dark, dry place for every week or two at 55° to 65° F with best humidity of 85 to 85 percent.
- After two weeks, potatoes that you want to store longer for winter use should be moved to a a long way cooler– 35° to 40°F—dark room, basement, or root cellar with affordable humidity and air float.
- For long storing—as long as 8 months, select potatoes which can also be corporate and not using a soft spots. Temperatures higher than 40°F will explanation why tubers to sprout and shrivel.
- Check out stored potatoes forever; if sprouts begin to form, knock the sprouts off at the side of your palms.
- Do not refrigerate potatoes; the air in a refrigerator is just too dry for potatoes and can lead them to shrivel. Do not store potatoes with apples; picked apples expel ethylene fuel which is in a position to explanation why potatoes to damage.
Now not ordinary Potato Storage Problems
- Some potatoes can become “sweet” when stored. Potatoes in storage would perhaps convert starch to sugar which is used throughout the tuber “breathing” process. The breathing methodology of potatoes stored in a cool place slows so that the starch reworked to sugar is not used in whole; the unused sugar will give the potatoes a sweet taste when cooked. To keep away from a sweet taste, take the potatoes out of storage quite a few days upfront of cooking so that the extra sugar can revert to starch—a process referred to as “reconditioning.”
- The skins of potatoes exposed to delicate can turn green. Greening is led to by means of a toxic alkaloid referred to as solanine. Green potatoes taste bitter. Do not devour green potatoes; solanine might reason illness. If a potato pores and pores and skin is green, peel or decrease away the golf green previous to cooking.
- Be urged that the leaves of potato crops are poisonous to other people and animals.
Further tips: Expand Potatoes.
