Mud Spuds

    The soil in our garden has a lot of clay in it.  Over the years I have learned that the worse time to dig potatoes is in the rain, when the soil is muddy.   When the soil is dry, the potatoes come out relatively clean, but when the soil is wet mud sticks to the potatoes and smears on the potato skin when you handle them.  It becomes a muddy job and requires more work to clean the spuds.  So I wait for dry weather to dig potatoes.

    Yesterday was a very rainy day, but we didn’t have any potatoes in the house, and we needed some for supper, so I put on my raincoat, rubber boots, and headed out to the garden to dig some.  As I expected, it was a muddy job, but fortunately, I only had to dig enough for one meal.

    I will only be digging potatoes as we need them for a couple of months.  The rest can stay in the ground until it starts getting cold, then I will dig them all (hopefully during a dry stretch).  We don’t have a root cellar, so I store them in the crawlspace under the house through the winter.  There it is cool, dark, and doesn’t freeze, keeping the potatoes fresh.  

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