Blog Archives

Buds & Blossoms

5/25/2016

After an unusually cold April and May here in Southern Ontario, we offer this photo album of buds and blossoms as proof that spring will prevail over Old Man Winter no matter how hard he tries to hold on. These tiny buds persevered through heavy frosts and even late May snow. They turned into leaves this past weekend when the weather finally warmed up. Spring has burst into summer here at the farm, and it is just beautiful!

Be sure to visit our photo gallery for additional pictures of flora and fauna around our farm.

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Journey To The Underground Part II

5/20/2016

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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.

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Journey to the Underground Part I

5/14/2016

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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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Millions of Seed Potatoes

5/9/2016

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The promise of the next growing season is held within our seed potatoes. Seed potatoes are very bulky and they arrive by the tractor trailer load. When two shipments arrive at the same time it can be quite hectic. The seed potatoes are unloaded one box at a time and stored until we are ready to plant potatoes. It takes about an hour to unload one truck.

One of the most common questions we are asked is “Why don’t you just plant your own potatoes?” There are several reasons actually. Growing seed potatoes is an entirely different industry than growing table stock potatoes. First of all, we don’t have room to store the seed potatoes over the winter that we would need to plant all our fields. Secondly, the seeds we buy come certified to be disease free. And lastly, there is very little chance of cross contamination of varieties when we purchase them from a certified grower. There would be nothing worse than planting a field only to realize that there were several different varieties of seeds mixed together.

Be sure to visit our photo gallery for additional pictures about growing potatoes.

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The Common-Tater

Buds & Blossoms

Journey To The Underground Part II

Journey to the Underground Part I

Millions of Seed Potatoes

The Common-Tater

Thompson Potato Farm

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​The Common-Tater

Buds & Blossoms

Journey To The Underground Part II

Journey to the Underground Part I

Millions of Seed Potatoes

The Common-Tater

Thompson Potato Farm

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Categories

The Common-Tater