You may recall that Beth Jukuri retired from delivering mail and in case you’re wondering what she’s been up to, we’ve seen that she’s doing some kayaking, bike riding, works on her quilts and other art projects and is also gardening and planting potatoes with the entire family. Today’s photos are from their potato planting last week. Beth said they started with 50 pounds each of Red and Yellow potatoes. They cut the potato in sections that have at least one “eye” on each piece. With the help of their neighbor’s planter which digs a trench, drops the seed potato in, then covers it up, they planted eight rows of potatoes. Beth said she was glad her daughter Abigail was there to ride on the back of the planter (she also snapped the second photo from her perch on that planter). It’s a good thing Beth’s husband loves to be on his tractor and has many implements to hook to his tractor to make jobs like this easier. If they end up with a bumper crop of potatoes, Beth may have a new venture selling them at a roadside stand. What a great activity for the entire family to get involved in.

In case you’re interested in planting some potatoes on a smaller basis, we have a video from Garden Answer showing how to plant them in raised beds. Home grown potatoes are the best!

Hi
I'm curious about why the daughter is riding on the
back of the planter. Is it to make sure everything
is dropping down OK?

A lot of tractor time is a team effort. As a kid, I used to ride behind my dad on our old Minneapolis Moline. What fun memories :) That was almost 60 years ago.

For small plantings...I've heard a bale of
hay/straw?? You plant in the bale and it's supposed
to work?? Never tried it....but I've heard it works
awesome!

Oh the Spring veggies...when I was a little kid,
Gram would make such a wonderful soup...she'd pick
little bitty carrots, peas, potatoes, etc..and it'd
be in a milk base. Oh for a taste of that!

Nice pix, Spuds MacKenzie! The video reminds me of the movie
“The Martian” starring Matt Damon…one of my favorite flicks.

Cool pictures and so interesting. We were
just looking at how well our potatoes were
doing today. Gardening gives you quite the
sense of accomplishment. Nice job!

Donna, you can also plant your taters in a compost pile! I'm thinking i wouldn't go for one that was composting manure tho.......

That’s what Damon used in The Martian.

Yeah, I'll pass on that one too.