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Garden in the City: There's More To Growing Potatoes Than Meets the Eye

ALBANY PARK — Four years into this whole vegetable gardening enterprise and, much like Cubs shortstop Starlin Castro, I'm still acting like a rookie.

I decided it was time to step up my game and take on an intermediate challenge: potatoes.

(You'll know I've truly arrived when/if I ever advance to melons.)

Seed potato. [All photos by DNAinfo/Patty Wetli except where credited otherwise.]

Potatoes have intrigued me for some time, partly because they're one of my favorite foods but also because I have an incredibly fond albeit incredibly vague recollection of growing them once, ages ago, with my Grandpa Waber. Actually, he did all the growing, I was just there to help scrub the dirt off a wagon full of tiny red tubers.

Even with those misty water-colored memories to spur me on, I was still reluctant to tackle taters.

Listen to this week's Garden in the City Podcast - No Small Potatoes:

Look up "growing potatoes" on any gardening site and you'll find lengthy instructions laden with words like "mounding," "foliar spray" and "chitting" (I chit you not), all of which made the process sound not only intimidating but rife with multiple points of failure.

Did I really need more opportunities to prove my bona-fides as a screw-up?

Peterson Garden Project had seed potatoes for sale this year, so clearly the universe's response to that question was, "Yes, yes you do."

Seed potatoes aren't really as fancy as they sound. In fact, we've all unwittingly grown our share simply by letting forgotten Idahos and Yukon Golds sprout eyes before we get around to mashing, baking or roasting them — though, FYI, experts advise against planting seeds grown from storebought potatoes.

Seed potato, AT-AT Walker edition.

My "certified" seeds came in three varieties — Purple Majesty, Yukon Gold and Sangra Red. I think. Because obviously I forgot to copy down this crucial tidbit before throwing out the packaging.

Peterson Garden Project also provided a handy step-by-step planting how-to courtesy of Seed Savers Exchange, which I immediately began to second-guess.

Potato Growing Guide said, "Slice the larger seed potatoes into smaller pieces. Each piece must contain at least one or two eyes or buds and be no smaller than one inch in diameter."

Each of my seeds had what I considered a "cluster of buds." Did these count as individual buds or a single total bud? Should I slice and dice or leave intact?

I posed the potato bud conundrum to Google.

The search engine's results failed to illuminate:

Not the potato buds I had in mind. [Betty Crocker]

I swapped out "bud" for "sprout" and was immediately overwhelmed with conflicting information.

According to one site, seeds should have three or four eyes, forget about one or two. Another seemed to suggest my wrinkly seeds were already past the point of rot. A third had me convinced my sprouts were too long. A fourth said if I did slice my seeds, they would need to dry for two weeks before planting, contradicting Seed Savers' quote of two days.

Biggest joke of all: Five to eight seed potatoes require about 10 feet of planting space. My entire plot is only eight feet long — and I'd reserved all of two feet for my four or five seeds.

I was paralyzed with indecision.

It seemed no matter which directions I chose to follow, mistakes would be made. And aside from all evidence to the contrary, I grow weary of mistakes.

Seed potatoes, lined up in their trench.

Here's what I ultimately decided: I would plant all my seed potatoes whole except for the AT-AT Walker* lookalike, which I cut in half and dried for two days. *(see: "Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back," ice planet Hoth battle scene, enemy weaponry.)

Seriously, these dudes are crying out for an animated "bud"-dy comedy.

I dug a trench, as instructed, placed each seed a couple of inches apart and admired how cute they looked — seriously, Pixar needs to jump on an anthropomorphized seed potato animated "bud"-dy comedy, stat — before covering them up with soil.

I'll figure out mounding another day.

Parkway Transformation

If I had unlimited dollars to give our parkway a complete overhaul — or any dollars period — I'd go buck wild at Lake Street Landscape Supply, buying pavers and wall stones, or what I generically call "the stuff that outlines flower beds."

Instead, when our building's chimney was damaged by a lightning strike last year (I chit you not) and had to be replaced, I asked the construction crew if I could salvage some of the damaged bricks. I nabbed a couple dozen and filed under "future landscaping stuff."

When, a week ago, I noticed a pile of railroad ties at Global Garden looking as though they were headed for the landfill, I shot an email to Peterson Garden Project's leaders. Yes, I could have them, they replied, if I could haul them away ASAP.

As much as I would love to regale you with a dramatic tale of how I single-handedly dragged a bunch of 60-pound ties along Lawrence Avenue, I believe last week's bags-of-compost debacle has cured me of my masochistic streak.

Luckily I had visiting muscle in the form of my brother Joey (that's Joe to the rest of you), in town for the holiday weekend with his family — and they needed to earn their keep.

Making houseguests earn their keep.

"Think of it like a CrossFit workout," I told him, as I pointed to the mountain of logs.

So now I had a pile of bricks and ties and I was ready to do some semi-serious landscaping.

Then this happened:

Putting a crimp in my gardening plans.

I don't know how much transforming I'll be accomplishing in the short term. Dave and I did manage to spread some mulch and add some thyme ground cover to the area we dug up last week but frankly I don't know if our marriage can survive a month of me whining, "You're not doing it right."

Side-by-Side Comparison

Week One vs. Week Two in both my vegetable plot — corn, beans and carrots have all sprouted — and landscaping.

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