Oct 26

I have fond memories my grandpa harvesting his potatoes when I was a kid. A neighbor brought over his tractor with a middle buster and would dig the potatoes. People came out of the woodwork to help pick up the potatoes and fill up the potato pit. I remember grandpa trying to pay his neighbors for their work and they would always refuse his money, but he was able to get them to take home some of the harvest.

I picked up a used sub-soiler a few weeks ago and installed a furrower blade on it basically turning it into a middle buster. I borrowed a neighbors Ford Jubilee tractor and desided to dig the last three rows of the Burbanks with it. I tried to dig on Saturday the 24th, but it started raining hard just after I dug the first row. By the time I got back in the garden on Monday the 26th the exposed potatoes had froze. I dug the last two rows with the tractor as seen in the photos below.

The Burbanks did not turn out well. They were disfigured with side lobes and only a few of them look like what you would buy at the store. The Burbank are the Idaho type russets. I found out that the problem with this variety of potatoes comes from too much heat or lack of water. This will probably be the first and only year I will grow the Burbanks.