Potato? Don’t remember planting them

I was checking on the celery plant when I noticed this potato plant growing between celery and komatsuna. I did not even plant any chitted potatoes at this area. This veggie patch was prepared in early June and was manured. Before then, I left it fallow for about a month. So it is still a mystery how did this potato plant sprouted on this patch.

I have a veggie patch which received sunlight at most 1~2hours per day. I usually dig in cold compost (kitchen waste and unused part from healthy end of season plants) on this area. I like cold compost than the hot compost where many other people prefer because I don’t have space for it. This area used to have very heavy soil (clay), when you overwater you have water-logged soil and during hot summer cake-dried, It does not take long for all the dug-in material to break and decompose with this method. Sometime when I dug in about 6 weeks almost everything has been decompose for small material. How happy to see earthworms when I dig in the soil when there was none before.  Oh those gorgeous fat earthworms. Because of this cold compost method, we have several sprouted potato at this particular veggie patch which we think came from our kitchen waste.

Cold composted veggie patch and sprouted potato.

Certain part of this veggie patch lack sunlight. A few potato plant that had been growing just a few months had died. Mik and I was digging and giggling like a young girl where those died potato plant roots were and surprised to find a few baby potatoes yesterday.Just enough for Rayyan breakfast. It was fun digging into the soil.

I had four chitted potatoes (potato meant to be cooked bought in local market but rhizomes or potato eye were already big) planted in June. Why four? Well it was just an experiment to see wether the weather was suitable for potato planting in Adelaide yet or not. I gave up hope they won’t sprout after waiting about a month.

End of July, Mik asked me did I planted any potatoes in containers that has broccoli and cauliflower in it because she saw sprouted potatoes trying to push it way out from the soil. This is how they were by the time I came to say hello to them.

Today when I looked at the potato plants, they are growing vigorously compared with the cold composted veggie patch.

I was so excited with the potato growth that I went to Bunnings and bought seed potatoes to plant some more. I bought Nicola variety. Planted some of the seed potatoes in polysterene box so that I could move them around to receive more sunlight. Need to find some space to plant all the potato seeds. Hopefully in 6months or so we could taste our home-grown potatoes.