I have slightly larger plastic cups, and pots, and some coconut husk pots I was going to separate them out to one they had a few true leaves. I'm getting the cilantro out of there now. I defiantly don't want to disturb the peppers. Now that I'm trying to figure out what to do with everything it is a bit of a pain. I'm moving in 1-2 weeks but really wanted to start my seedlings--eek. Good thing I'm only moving two miles away. So its not safe to just stick something down the edges of the ells and pull out the seedlings with their dirt? That was my initial plan, anyways. Also seedlings once they've started to grow don't benefit from the heating mat? Also to Charlieboring - Its a Hyrofarm heating mat, got it with the tray/dome for about 22 dollars. I also got a 7'' dome to put over them once they got larger and I moved them to pots/cups (plastic cups with holes in the bottom.) bmoser teach me more ;_;

I doubt anyone could tell much difference with the golds. Yukons are known for poor yield compared to harder to find gold varieties. But you have shipping cost when buying less common varieties. So I saved myself plenty of Augusta for seed. Previously I had grown Keuka which did better than Yukon and seems very uninteresting to CPBs. Oddly here in potato country I saw only 1 or 2 all season!!! I had my soil tested in fall 2012 and it was 7.3 IIRC and the soil here is sandy and alkaline by nature. Plus the drought increased alkalinity due to irrigation rather than rain. So I bought 40# of split pea sulfur from the farm chemical company in town and spread that. I meant to do another soil test this fall to see how far down it dropped but the garden produced so excellently I figured I would skip one year. I didn't get more sulfur this fall as intended but probably will in spring. The potato farmers here use truckloads of powdered sulfur and I guess it to be ammonium sulfate? Potatoes around here seemed to have amazing yields this year. I had a crop failure last year and huge production this year. They sure love water! I grew half of my beds in black plastic mulch and half in pine debris mulch. Both did great but the pine debris mulch needed replenishing to avoid green shoulders and it didn't hold in moisture or hold back weeds as much. We had no bugs which was crazy weird but there was a little fungal problems. I sprayed a little sulfur and copper but mostly ignored it because the tubers were formed by then and it didn't spread to tomatoes. The farmers sprayed tons of chemicals for little effect. I am growing all my potatoes in black plastic next year with drip lines under and I use some mulch on top to help the stem area stay covered.

Just wanted to address the picture (my pics) issue really quickly. I have often been accused of over-sharing on the internet. I live on a corner lot, so anyone who frequents this forum could probably drive by and recognize my garden. If a pedophile is lurking here, they could see my kids and perhaps figure out where I live. That does concern me somewhat, but I watch my kids like a hawk, and I think that a true pedophile has many more extensive and disgusting sources of phtos than my baby butt garden pics. I can't help but share pics of my garden and my kids, they are my biggest sources of pride and I just love to share. I know I am naive but I feel in my heart that most if not all gardeners are good folks. I trust this forum and I feel safe here. As for my grow list: I am going to try to grow Nematode Resistant plants when possible. I am scaling back this year as far as varieties for this reason. I am currently on a seed hunt for: Pole Beans: Poamoho or Alabama No 1 Bush Beans Monoa Wonder or Harvester Lima Bean Nemagreen Bell pepper charleston belle or carolina wonder Wando Peas My herbs, lettuces, spinach etc don't seem affected by RKN so I will again grow tons of them. I hope to grow around 20 Nematode resistant tomatoes (assorted). I cannot find any nematode resistant cucs, squash, or soybeans, so I am unsure what I will do for those or if I will just skip them this year. I'd also love to grow carrots and beets but last year both were a complete failure (tiny stunted crop). Jo

Carol, You know, the more you learn about gardening, the harder it is to answer a simple question about spacing (or any other question), but I'll try. Because of all the different types of soil and different ways to plant, I'll likely give you 5 or 6 answers to your question instead of one. I suppose the proper answer would be to say that we all should follow the OSU recommended spacing for potatoes which say to plant your seed potatoes 1' apart in rows 3' apart. That's not how I do it most of the time though. Instead, I tailor my plant spacing to the particular area where I'm planting, taking into consideration the friability of the soil, its fertility, its drainage and its water-holding capacity, and whether I'm planting in grade-level soil, raised beds or containers. I also space seed potatoes much farther apart in a drought year to try to prevent excessive drought stress. If I am planting potatoes in a raised bed with somewhat fluffy, loamy clay thats been highly improved through the addition of lots of organic matter over the years, I generally use spacing similar to what John Jeavons recommends, generally planting the potatoes on 9" centers, spaced 9" from one another in all directions. Wherever I have a "hole" or "gap" along the edge of the raised bed which includes space in the 9" between two seed potatoes, I stick a petunia or a sweet alyssum plant into that gap to pretty up the bed and attract beneficial insects. Having the flowers there might reduce the potato yield a little but I don't care. I always mix flowers and herbs into my beds because I like a pretty crazy quilt garden and not one that looks like a perfectly-spaced agricultural field of straight rows. If I am growing in a wider than average raised bed (I have two that are wider than the others) and I want to plant in straight rows, which suits those two beds since they are so wide, then I plant them 8 to 12" apart in two rows that are 20" apart. My other raised beds are not as wide and I could put only one row doen the middle of those beds, so I use the 9" center spacing in them. If I am planting into a grade-level garden plot that doesn't have raised beds, then it likely is in the sandy soil on the south side of the pecan tree where the soil is slightly improved sand. No matter how much organic matter I add to the soil here in this area, it pretty much all decomposes by the next year, so I never make a lot of headway in really improving it a great deal...it's that old "heat eats compost" rule in play. In this area I use more traditional (but not entirely) spacing of 8 to 12" between seed potatoes in the rows and 2 to 3 feet between rows. While 2 to 3' sounds like pretty wide spacing, you know how tall and wide potato plants get...so they all grow together into one big mess with no real pathways between them, but I do start out with proper spacing even if it doesn't look like it by May or June. If I am planting fingerlings in that area, I go with 2' spacing between rows but use the 3' spacing for regular potatoes. If I am planting in grade level clay soil like I have in the lower section of my garden and it is fairly well improved but not a raised bed and so more prone to drainage issues, I plant the seed potatoes 12" apart in rows 3' apart and just hope for the best. If it is a rainy year, this area may stay too wet and I may lose the potatoes, so I tend to use it for potatoes only in a dry year. If I am planting in containers, I just try to adjust the planting as best I can and what I do will vary depending on the size and shape of the container but I mostly space the seed potatoes 6 to 8 inches apart in the container. If I am planting in a cage using the mulch method, I'll plant the seed potatoes about 6-8" apart and will put about 4" of a soil/compost (but not manure, and in fact never fresh manure in the current year because of scab) blend on top of them. As they grow upward, I keep adding alternating layers of grass clippings/straw and compost until the plants either top out at their usual height or until they flower. I generally leave about 5 or 6" of the plant's top growth unmulched and exposed at all times. It takes some tinkering to figure out what works best in your soil and your growing conditions. Unless you live in an area with good rainfall, you'll get a bigger yield with rows spaced 2' or 3' apart. If you're in a heavy rainfall area, you can get away with spacing your rows 18-20" apart. Hope this helps, Dawn