We had some rot too as I planted the potatoes at the low clayey end of the garden this year. Not a lot though and we've been digging a few hills at a time for a month to eat new potatoes and peas and then beans. A couple weeks ago we watered them good and then pulled the hoses and said, "you're on your own." But then we got all this rain so that should help them mature. We usually dig 4th of July at the same time we are putting up potatoes. Everything else has been early this year so maybe they will be too.

I had a pretty bad crop this yr. Due to the fact i was gone working and didn't have the time to fertile and water. And i was late planting.
Mostly small potatoes.

Busy1 - Did you get those great onions again this year? I took out about 3/4 of one bed this morning, but none are as big as yours were last year.

I've had the best crop ever for me, but I don't have a lot of history for comparison. I used seed potatoes from Conrad farms and every one I planted resulted in a nice big plant.

I used a lot of hay mulch and kept them watered with drip irrigation, so they weren't too stressed by the hot, dry spell we had.

I've only dug three plants so far, but all three had an assortment of small and medium size potatoes. The remaining plants look pretty sad but are still standing and have some green showing so I'm letting them coast.

I dug mine last night, but it wasn't a very good crop. There were tons of them, but they were all pretty small.

Leslie

After lunch I went back outside and finished digging potatoes. By the time I came back inside we were in the mid-90s and I couldn't stand it any more out there.

At the north end of the bed that I dug after lunch, there were lots of white ones, and overall they were bigger than the red potatoes. With the reds, I had gobs and gobs of taters per plant, but they were smaller--from marble-sized to about tennis ball sized. With the whites, there were much fewer potatoes per plant, but they were much larger than the reds and there were almost no tiny ones. So, I guess I'll plant the white ones again next year.

Dorothy, Mine did finish early and they've had severe issues with grasshoppers and potato leafhoppers the last few weeks, so I was ready to dig them and move on. I thought of you and your grasshoppers when the darned things were landing on me and just sitting there like I was a grasshopper park bench while I was digging.

Busyone, Small potatoes still taste great!

Carol, How did the onions turn out?

jdlaugh, The problem with having "the best potato crop ever" last year was that from this point forward, no crop ever will match it or possibly could.

I usually dig as early as I reasonably can so I can plant a succession crop of something else in the space vacated by the potatoes. However, in a busy year, I've left them in the ground at least a month after the foliage died back and then dug them and they were fine. Really, you can leave them as long as you want as long as the soil drains well enough that a heavy rain won't rot them. I just like to get the next crop into that space.

Leslie, As early as y'all started hitting the high temps, I am not surprised you got small potatoes. I wish your weather would be a little kinder to your garden. I think it isn't going to happen though.

Dawn

Dawn, The onions are all types and all sizes, but they are OK I guess. I planted lots of different things toward the end of the planting season and got mixed results. I have a raised bed of Candy that I haven't harvested yet, and I have the bunch of long day Ringmaster still in the ground. I have been reading several onion sites on line and some say that long day types can be planted anywhere north of 36 parallel. I am barely over that line so maybe I should be planting long day anyway. The Ringmaster plants are very large, and are bulbing and showing no signs of being finished. The Candy bed has mostly fallen over but are still very green so I don't know how much was wind and how much is just normal time for harvest. I think I will leave them another week and see what happens. I probably need to leave the Ringmaster even longer than that.

If the onions turn out like it looks like they will, I may stick with Candy and Ringmaster next year. I have not been impressed with any of the red onions I have grown. They don't get large in my garden, and by the time you peel off several layers of dry thick skin, there isn't much left. All of my onions would probably have benefited from more water.

Last summer I threw out my back, right when we should have harvested potatoes. We harvested some, but with the heat and other issues I didn't get 'round to digging until late November. I dug from November through February, finding LOTS of good potatoes. They were in great condition and we ate them until the end of March.

George
Tahlequah, OK

Soonergrandmom,
I didn't have as good of a yr with the onions.i did get sone nice size ones, but still not as good as last yr.

Mostly because i just wasn't here to give them the attention they needed when they needed it.

Corn is a total flop also.

But putting in120 hrs in a work week didn't leave me much time to work in the garden.

Carol, I think it is wonderful that Ringmaster is doing so well. Red onions never do as well for me as the big supersweet types like Texas 1015Y and Candy that produce huge softball-sized bulbs in a good year. I always grow them, though, so I'll have red onions for Habanero Gold.

When my onion tops started falling over, I thought maybe it was just the wind at first cause we were having very high winds in the 30s and 40s at that time. But then, as I watched, a whole lot of the ones that still were standing fell over in a 2-3 day period that wasn't windy, so I knew they were done and then I harvested them a week or so later. I am happy with the onion harvest, but likely would be less happy if I didn't have tons of them in the freezer from last year.

George, See there--it does make sense to leave them stored in the ground in a year that's not far too wet. I've done the same thing occasionally, but I usually have to get them out of the ground by mid-December or sometimes late November because heavy autumn rainfall will rot them. I'd sure rather be digging potatoes in November than in June or July.

Busy1, That's too many hours a week to work!!!! I don't know how you were getting any sleep at all.

Dawn

Dawn, I still have frozen onions from last year also so I will keep as many of these as I think I can use fresh and not freeze as many as last year.

I dug the few Yukon Gold potatoes that I had and they didn't do well at all this year. The red ones (nameless), are still green and will probably do better.

I worked in the garden this morning but came back inside about 8:30 because I was already hot. I really need to be out there, but I don't want to be and my temps aren't even close to some of yours. I have to go weed-eat around my containers though no matter how hot it is. The grass gets the extra water run-off and jumps up there quickly. I don't want to water them until I get rid of the grass.

Busy1 - I agree with Dawn, that is way too many hours. My DH always tells me that death is natures way of telling you to slow down. LOL He doesn't have to tell me that much anymore because I have slowed down.

My Yukon Golds and Norkotah (hope I spelled that right) didn't do well, but Kennebec did great. Red Pontiac did great. If I'd planted so Adirondack Blue or All-Blue, we could have had red, white and blue potato salad for the 4th of July.

I worked in the garden a little early in the day, but then discovered pickling cucumbers on the vines, and dropped everything to run to the store and get pickling spices because the ones in my pantry are a couple of years old. In Gainesville, the Wal-Mart was sold out of all pickling spices, even the Mrs. Wage's mixes, but I found the spices at the Wal-Mart in Ardmore, and I really stocked up on them too. However, I was not a glutton and I did not buy all the jars of pickling spices. I left one jar for the next person.

Once back home, I went out after lunch and started picking tomatoes again. I didn't get to finish because the rain got here sooner than I expected. I did get 6 bowls of tomatoes picked, to go along with the 2 on the kitchen counter left over from Saturday's picking, so I have 8 bowls of tomatoes to eat, dehydrate and preserve. If the rain hadn't rolled in so quickly, I likely could have picked 2 or 3 more bowls of tomatoes and then I would have had almost as many as I had on Saturday.

We had a thunderstorm warning for high winds and possible hail up to dime-size, but the first wave of the storm blew through here without hailing. I understand some hail fell east of us. The best part was the temperature dropped from 88 degrees at our house to 69 in about an hour or so. It would be wonderful to be out there working in that kind of termperature, but there's lightning so I won't do it, and I'm already hearing new thunder from the west/southwest as the next wave of storms approaches.

Even though we had 2.7" of rain the last time it rained here, it didn't seem to make much of a difference. Some of the cracks in the ground healed up, but the ponds are still empty and the grasses haven't greened up much. You'd think almost 3" of rain would have made more of a difference.

It was very hot/humid here early today, as it was yesterday. That's the down side of rainy, humid summer weather--a heat index that makes it feel so much hotter. I'd still rather have the weather we're having now than to have a repeat of last June.

My results are all most same as Dawn's, russet type Norkotah and blue type Adirondack did not do well. But Kennebec and Red Pontiac did great. I spoiled some of the yukon gold as I forget bring them inside for couple of days leads to green potatoes! -Chandra

Carol Deppe got me onto considering potatoes' respective flavors. I'm the sort of person that tends to eat and enjoy anything which is acceptably palatable. But there really is a difference in flavor between some varieties. Last year we purchased a bag of yellow potatoes, at the store, which I believe were probably Bintje. They were the most outstanding potatoes, for baking, which I have tasted to date. Yukon Gold ranks up there too. But in my opinion Kennebec is just okay. Still, when it came time to dig potatoes, I resolved to grow Kennebec again, in quantity, at least until I can find a variety which I like more, and which has such prodigious production. Yes, I like great flavor. But I'm also trying to grow most of our own food, and production counts!

Last week I read, on another forum, that Kennebec apparently does little more for Tom Wagner than provoke a yawn. He has more than one line of potatoes, from his TPS (true potato seed) lines, which have such production. And Tom puts a lot of importance on flavor. So, I'm hoping to find one of his varieties to eventually replace Kennebec.

Someone from California sent me three varieties of potatoes reputed to be heat and drought tolerant. I've got one of them sprouting in the garden now. They are looking good too. So, we'll see.

George

George, I hope you'll keep us posted on the performance of your heat-tolerant, drought-tolerant potatoes.

Dawn