The Common-Tater
Potato #plant17 is complete! John planted the last of the Russet seed potatoes yesterday, the planting equipment is all moved back to the farm and we can retire the potato planter for another season. Tiny potato plants have started to poke through the earth which is always exciting. As for Sweet Corn #plant17, RJ won’t be finished for about a month. While he has already planted several sections of sweet corn and little stalks are pushing up, the job stretches out over two months. You can see a video of RJ planting sweet corn by visiting “Sweet Corn- Coming Soon!”
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The tractors have now moved off the home farm and on to other fields. This means is it slightly quieter around the house…but I use those words lightly. Peace and quiet on a farm is a February event! The planting of the potato crop seems to be on schedule despite the cool, wet weather this spring and untimely equipment repair needed on the seed potato cutter. All the Yukon Gold potatoes have been planted and we have moved onto the Russet potatoes. And in the meantime, RJ has planted the first two sections of sweet corn! For more information about the potato planter you can visit “Journey To The Underground Part II.”
Last week things started to get busy at the farm. Tuesday was cold and wet. The miserable day didn’t slow down the arrival of the seed potatoes. We received three tractor trailer loads that day. I forget every year how impressive the trucks look when they are tilted up so high. Every last seed potato counts! Once the weather turned around, we got two fields at the home farm planted with AC Chaleur potatoes. And it begins…. To read more about what seed potatoes are and why we use them, you can visit “Millions of Seed Potatoes.”
The saga of the seed potato’s journey to the underground is almost complete. As you have seen in previous installments of The Common-Tater, a tremendous amount of prep work has been done before we take the potato planter to the field. Every field has been passed over at least three times by the manure spreader, the disc harrow and the cultivator. The seed potatoes have been received at the farm, cut and delivered to the field. Now all that remains is to get the spuds into the ground.
Our potato planter plants 4 rows of potatoes at one time. The planter cuts 4 trenches and drops in the cut seed potatoes at evenly spaced intervals. Then the planter fills in the trenches and adds a generous layer of dirt to the top of the planted rows of potatoes to create a small mound or hill of dirt. Planting our crop of potatoes takes about three weeks. Now all we do is sit back, relax and wait for September and the harvest..…(not really.) Be sure to visit our photo gallery for additional pictures about growing potatoes. Of course the million dollar question is – “Why do you cut up your seed potatoes? Can’t you just plant them the way they are and save yourself all kinds of time?” While we could do that, it is a waste of our seed. Every eye on the seed potato will produce a plant. Depending on the size of the seed potato and the number of eyes it has, we can grow 2-4 plants from each seed potato once we cut it.
Our seed potato cutting line is about 75 feet long and involves two bulk trucks, two belts, at least one forklift and the seed cutter. It is set up outside due to space requirements and the excessive dust generated while we are handling the unwashed potatoes. Forklifts dump box after box of whole seed potatoes into a bulk truck. The seed potatoes travel along a small belt into the seed cutter (which is the big blue box in the middle of the video.) Inside the seed cutter they are sorted according to size and cut into pieces about the size of an egg. Once they are cut, they travel up a long belt into another bulk truck. This truck is loaded with almost 14 metric tonnes of cut potatoes and driven to the field where the planter is waiting. It takes about one hour to cut a load of seed to fill the truck, and it takes about half a day to plant the field (if all goes well.) Be sure to visit our photo gallery for additional pictures about growing potatoes. |
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