Growing Potatoes

Well, last week was rather busy, but we found some time to plant some potatoes that were starting to sprout in the bag.  These were regular russet potatoes from the grocery store.

These are left over ones.. the ones we planted had even longer sprouts than this.

Each potato had several sprouts, so we cut each sprout and left a bit of the potato with it.  Then we planted these pieces in ditches that Jesse had made in the garden bed.  We were surprised to see how fast they grew in a little over a week!  : )
                        
We are very excited to watch these potatoes grow..
We have to cover our beds to keep the chickens from scratching and ruining the seeds.. We had to learn this the hard way!  : )

Faith making a silly face by the potato bed. : )

Faith loves to help plant seeds in the garden!  We really appreciate her help.  : )  God really has given her a gift in being very delicate with the seeds and covering them up ever so carefully.

I will try to take more pictures if the Lord allows these to grow and then when we harvest them!  : )   So look out for updates on the potatoes!  : )

                                       -------------------POTATO UPDATE-------------------
So we are now at the end of March (about a month since we planted the potatoes) and I wanted to share some new photos.

        We hilled them up several times through the month as they grew.  Jesse waters the potatoes every couple of days and our three Barred Rock chickens are great pest control as well.  We haven't added anything else (because we are trying to grow everything organically).  They seem to be doing great (above ground anyways).  : )

Hopefully they will be growing lots of nice potatoes underground.  : )

I just read that when they blossom you can dig up "new potatoes" (little ones I guess).
For the mature (big) potatoes though you have to wait two weeks after the plant dies.
What a silly thing it seems that we can't wait for the potato plants to die!  : )
Can't wait to see how big some home grown organic potatoes will be.