Planting potatoes

A couple of days ago, my sister and I planted our potatoes. We knew we wanted to do it "by the book" and the book we are using this year is "Joy of Gardening," by Dick Raymond. We are hoping the yield will be higher than last year. We are planting white and red potatoes now, but maybe we will plant some sweet potatoes when the weather is warmer.

We bought seed potatoes, cut them into quarters and sprinkled lime over them. They need to sit in the lime overnight.

The soil must be well-tilled for a good start.

We dug out the rows 6 to 8 inches. It is certainly not the same all the way down. We dug it out and then following behind, dug it again until it was at least 8 inches deep.

We place fertilizer in the bottom of the row. Beforehand, we mixed our fertilizers to approximately 10-10-10. Since we are using organic fertilizer, it is hard to get the exact mix, but putting different fertilizers together gives us something like an all-purpose mixture. After that, we covered the fertilizer with about an inch of dirt.

We then put some bone meal in the spots where we are planning to place the potatoes.

The potatoes are placed along each side so they would have room to grow.

The next step is to cover them with dirt.

And now we wait.