Because of the Late Blight hitting my tomatoes this year(2009), I terminated the potato plants in an effort to save whatever crop I had. The Yukon Gold potatoes look great and the Kennebec potatoes are smaller but the perfect size for DW and me. I could have left them grow but I did not want to take the chance. Since I did terminate the plants, I decided to harvest the first potato tower. I covered the building of and the growth of the tower in an earlier post. Now it is time to see what I got. The tower is 20 ½” tall. I tied garden twine around the main sprouts and attached a bungee cord to keep the plant in position as I remove the compost from around the spuds and rhizomes. ( photo / image / picture from jbest123's Garden ) This is the first spud I came to. It is about 16” above the seed potato I had planted. The rhizome and potato were growing horizontally not upward like many people say. ( photo / image / picture from jbest123's Garden ) The second spud was located about 13 1/2 “from the seed potato. ( photo / image / picture from jbest123's Garden ) Here I started to remove the next level. ( photo / image / picture from jbest123's Garden ) There seams to be rhizomes with marble size potatoes everywhere. ( photo / image / picture from jbest123's Garden ) This is the potato plant as removed from the soil. It is about 20” from the tip of the green to the seed potato. There were three nice potatoes below the seed potato. I hope this answers some questions as where potatoes grow on a plant. ( photo / image / picture from jbest123's Garden ) The weight of the potatoes on this plant is meaningless but it was 3 lb 3 oz. ( photo / image / picture from jbest123's Garden )
Those are Kennebec aren`t they? I tried them last year and was disappointed with the total production. But they were a good buttery potato even if smaller.
