Cutting Potatoes and Placing them in Rows in the Garden

Now that it is the middle of April and soil is no longer frozen it is time to till part of the garden and add some cool spring crops. Three things were added to the garden yesterday. These include seed potatoes, peas, and radishes. These three crops are always sown directly into the garden and are not normally transplanted from pots or containers. I will probably start adding my spinach and lettuce plants into the garden next. These crops were grown indoors first and they have been outside for quite some time and are just about ready to be transplanted.

Before potatoes can be placed into the ground they need to be cut. There are two reasons to do this. First this allows you to have multi plants coming from every potato instead of just one plant from each. Second you need to allow the potato to somewhat heel or harden before going into the soil. This will prevent the potato from rotting. For these two reasons you need to cut your potatoes before planting.

Once I got my potatoes into the ground it was a perfect time to start planting pea seed and radish seeds. These two seeds probably could have been planted a little bit earlier, but the soil was too wet to till the garden and yesterday was the first good day of April. I planted both of them at the end of my potato rows which means I have a little bit more than 10 feet of extra rows for both of these seeds. This should be plenty as long as the seeds sprout.

Now that I am starting to plant seeds in the garden that means I will have to start placing my flowers outside to harden them off in order to get them into the garden as quickly as possible. These flowers are essential for getting those insects that are needed to protect my plants from possible unwanted pests. I have planted much more flowers this season and I am hoping to continue planting more until summer arrives.

I also have grape plants and raspberry plants that are sprouting and I have kept them inside in order for them to produce leaves and get them stronger before placing them outside. I have also cleaned up my blueberries and hopefully will be removing the straw from my strawberries in the next few days.