First Potatoe Harvest of the Year?

Yesterday, I harvested about 25 pounds of potatoes! Spring equinox has just arrived, the weather here is grey, rainy and mostly cold. There is still some snow on the ground and the top layer of the ground is still frozen in many places. So how, you might wonder, am I harvesting the first potatoes in 2012?

I’ll tell you in a minute, but first let me share the general idea. In climates like here, one has maybe about 90 days of good growing season, June, July and August. Sometimes the weather is warm and soil temperatures high enough in May or into September. To grow food, veggies, berries and fruits in these conditions many season extension strategies can be employed. Let me list a few here:

  • Start seedlings in-doors
  • Cold frames
  • Hoop houses
  • Greenhouses
  • Cloches
  • Grow frost hardy and cold tolerant varieties
  • Use perennials, yes, food perennials

And, also the one specific method that allowed me to dig up our first potato crop so early in the year. If you have enough out door area, one just plants more of what you want to harvest early the following year. Specially produce and veggies, that can stay in the ground during winter. Now, if there is a good snow cover before the ground really starts to freeze, everything underneath is quite well protected. If it starts freezing without any snow, a thick layer of mulch can help a lot to protect everything underneath.

What happened is that last fall I only managed to harvest half of the potato patch. Tthe other half got covered with a 1-foot layer of straw. Digging up these potatoes yesterday was a lot of fun, including that some of them were almost to the size of a grapefruit, not quite as round, though. Some of them were not deep enough and were frost damaged, but over 3/4 were fine. Probably the reason for loosing some was due to not enough mulching.

This method is also quite helpful if the space or possibility for food storage inside or outside are limited, by just using the growing area itself as the storage.

I am sure there are other crops than potatoes where similar strategies can be used. Myself, I have experience with carrots, using a different strategy as well as with kale, and what I have heard from many, Brussels sprouts can be harvested the whole winter long. This is something I’d like to try out one of these days.

Why don’t you share what you manage to harvesting in the winter or early spring and extend the harvesting and growing season?