GB 091 Potatoes, Daphne
29:48
SPEAKERS
Debbie Flower, Warren Roberts, Farmer Fred
Farmer Fred 00:00
Garden Basics with Farmer Fred is brought to you by Smart Pots, the original lightweight, long lasting fabric plant container. it's made in the USA. Visit SmartPots.com slash Fred for more information and a special discount, that's SmartPots.com/Fred.
Farmer Fred 00:20
Welcome to the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast. If you're just a beginning gardener or you want good gardening information, you've come to the right spot.
Farmer Fred 00:32
Are you planting potatoes? Our favorite retired college horticulture professor, Debbie Flower, has some tips about choosing the right potato varieties. Also how to cut and prepare them for planting. And, she offers a couple of good reasons for growing your potatoes in containers for ease of harvest, and to thwart any diseases that could spread to your tomato or pepper plants that might be in the same garden bed. And the Plant of the Week is a shrub that's a real show for the nose, the Daphne, a great choice for a dry, shady area. Warren Roberts of the UC Davis Arboretum tells us all about it. It's on episode 91 of the Garden Basics podcast, brought to you by Smart Pots, and we'll do it all in under 30 minutes. Let's go.
Farmer Fred 01:21
Here on the Garden Basics podcast, we like to tackle your questions. There's a lot of ways to send them. You can email them into fred@farmerfred.com. You can leave us a text or a voice message, just give us a call at 916-292-8964 that's 916-292-8964. Also, you can leave a message vocally without using your phone, if you use Speakpipe. It's speakpipe.com slash garden basics. Give it a try, you might like it, and especially when we talk with our favorite college horticultural Professor Debbie Flower. And a lot of people are getting into potato planting mode. Melody writes in and says, "I'm attaching a picture of some sad potatoes that I forgot about in my garage and they are sprouting. I've been wanting to try growing potatoes. Can I just use these and just plant them all?" Melody, I wish we were talking to you live because we would have questions for you. Are those store-bought potatoes? Or are those seed potatoes? Because there is a big difference. And Debbie Flower, for your own information, I'm looking at the picture of the sprouting potatoes on Melody's workbench, and one of them does have sort of a blackish patina on one side of it. That blackish patina might represent a fungus, you wouldn't want to plant that potato because it would spread that fungus to your soil. Plus, you only want to take eyes of potatoes that are seed potatoes, because grocery store potatoes may have that fungus. So you want to use certified seed potatoes. Let's say they are seed potatoes, what do you do?
Debbie Flower 03:02
You can plant them, if you have seed potatoes that have sprouted, you can plant them, you could just plant the whole potato. But what's usually recommended is to cut the potato in pieces and make sure each piece has one eye. With it, the eye being the node and the node has the bud in it, it's often recommended that you either let them sit for 24 hours, potatoes are very wet. And if you put them in the ground immediately when you've cut them, there are natural funguses and bacteria in the soil that would love that moisture, glom onto it, grow, and potentially turn your little potato cutting into mush. So if you let it sit for 24 hours, the exterior of that part of the potato that you're going to plant that contains an eye will dry out a little bit and that will prevent fungus from occurring. If you need to plant immediately get some soil sulfur, cut your potato into the pieces, each with an eye and as much of the potato attached as you can, based on how many cuts you've made in that potato and shake it in soil sulfur. Sulfur is very acidic and will prevent funguses and bacteria from growing.
Farmer Fred 04:12
And I imagine there would be no harm when you're cubing that potato into eyes to include maybe two eyes per cube.
Debbie Flower 04:20
Right, the smaller the pieces you make, the more eyes you cut out individually, the less food that that eye has to live on until it gets itself established. The rest of the potato has lots of nutrition in it. As we know, we eat potatoes for that purpose. So the bigger pieces, yes, may have two eyes, but maybe one won't grow or but just having that extra potato attached provides the eye with that much more nutrition so that they have time, something to live on, something to eat basically, while they get the shoot up and the roots down. I would cut it in half from top to bottom. So from the skinny point from end to end, if you laid it sideways, it's sort of an egg shape or an oval from bisecting that oval in its longest dimension, at least do that. And then I'd probably cut those in half also.
Farmer Fred 05:12
That's a good size.
Debbie Flower 05:13
So I'd have four pieces. Yeah, I have never gone to as small as one by one inches. I've gone two inches by two inches. An interesting thing about potatoes, as I said, potatoes or stems, hey, this is a science moment. Potatoes are stems, which is why they can turn green. Things like beets are roots, and they cannot turn green. But potatoes can and because they're stems. And if you at one end of that oval, there are many eyes close together. And if you look down the potato the eyes get further and further apart, the end with where the potato's eyes are close together is the growing end, and had that potato remained in the ground and been healthy, that stem would have grown out from that direction. But you can start at that end and find out that the eyes are in a spiral around the potato, the end where they're close together, it's sometimes hard to figure out the beginning of the spiral. But I've had students take a marker and find the spiral and then they spiral around and down the potato to the other end.
Farmer Fred 06:14
So which way when you plant that piece of potatoes should the eyes or the sprouts be facing or does it not matter.
Debbie Flower 06:21
It's not a big deal that the plant will find the upright for the stem and the down for the root. But if you have some control, and I imagine you do, I would point the eyes up.
Farmer Fred 06:31
Alright, and how deep should you plant these pieces of potato?
Debbie Flower 06:35
Well the rule for planting for almost everything is two to three times the diameter of what you're planting. That's a little hard to gauge because we're using different potato sizes, but I would cover it with just a couple of inches of soil.
Farmer Fred 06:50
And, I'd say two to three inches deep. Okay, and hope for the best. Planting a potato whole would be much like planting a head of garlic whole. You'd end up with more, but smaller product.
Debbie Flower 07:08
Yes, and crowded plants don't produce as well. I have seen that jungle because for me once a potato patch it's always a potato patch because I always miss harvesting something which I don't realize is there until it starts to grow the next season and then I have that jungle Yes.
Farmer Fred 07:25
Well now that brings up another interesting question since potatoes, correct me if I'm wrong, are members of the Solanaceae family. Would you want to avoid putting tomatoes or peppers in that same bed?
Debbie Flower 07:37
Yes, if you're doing crop rotation, which is an excellent thing to do, but you have to have the space to do it. Or the time. You skip seasons with things. Yes, you don't plant Solanaceae plants in the same family in the same spot as they were last year. So the Solanaceae family is a popular one for growing outdoors. Because it's tomatoes, potatoes, eggplants, tobacco, which is is a fun plant to grow, whether you use it or not, it's still a fun plant to grow. They're all in the Solanaceae family and you don't want to plant a Solanaceae where you planted a Solanacease last year.
Farmer Fred 08:12
And so the thought then of having a bed dedicated to potatoes may not necessarily be a good idea, especially if you start seeing a decline in those potatoes year after year, you might want maybe two beds for potatoes and alternate the beds and then in the off year, in one potato bed, you might solarize it.
Debbie Flower 08:31
Yes, or there are lots of techniques for growing potatoes in containers. Mm hmm. Because they they're easier to harvest when they're grown in a container or grown in a straw bale something something along those lines. a straw bale in my mind, although I've never done it, I've just read about it, seen it seen other people do it, it takes more effort to produce a healthy crop. Because you don't have a lot of it isn't very similar to field soil. It drains differently, has different nutrient holding abilities, different water holding abilities, etc. So but if you get used to it, that could be a really great way because it's easy then to stick your hand in the straw and pull out the potato. But stuff like that is done in containers as well where there lots of drainage holes and straw is used or lightweight media is used. And as the potato grows up, remember the potatoes is stem. So as the potato grows up, the plant grows up, the green stems grow up, you throw in whatever it is you're using your medium, and cover the stems and then you get more stems, more underground stems and those are the edible potatoes. And because it's in a container, you can dump it all out and harvest that way or you can reach in through your lightweight media and find the potatoes very easily. Harvesting potatoes is a thing of its own. There are even tools called potato forks, but I always end up ended up impaling the potatoes with such a tool. So growing in a container might be an easier way to do it. Yeah, you
Farmer Fred 10:03
Yeah, you can just dump the container at harvest time.
Debbie Flower 10:07
And if you have used, which you shouldn't, but if you have used one of those grocery store potatoes that has the fungus on it, you haven't contaminated your soil, what you do with the media you grow in could be a little tricky. You either have to put it in a hot compost pile or solarize it or let it sit idle for certainly a year to hopefully quell that fungus. But once you've got fungus, I swear when the earth I shouldn't swear, when the earth does whatever it's going to do, let's say it freezes or totally catches fire, or whatever, fungus spores are going to survive. They're known to be able to survive fire, they're known to be able to survive freezing. So if you've added them from the grocery store, you're probably never going to get rid of them. Even if you grow in a container.
Farmer Fred 10:55
Even if you solarize the soil?
Debbie Flower 10:57
Because if they're in their spore phase, funguses can survive that. They can survive those high temperatures.
Farmer Fred 11:06
Debbie Downer!
Debbie Flower 11:07
I know.
Farmer Fred 11:10
But anyway, potatoes are fun to grow. And like you say it's the hunt job at harvest time. And how do you know when it's harvest time, since they grow under ground?
Debbie Flower 11:20
When they start to flower you don't want them to flower because flowering takes food out of the stem. As I've said multiple times, the potato is a stem, it's a modified stem, it's a stem, modified for storage of food, so that the plant can live off of that food if necessary. And when it goes to flower, it takes food out of that potato. So when it starts to flower, that would be time to start to harvest. But you can harvest anytime.
Farmer Fred 11:45
There would just be probably different sizes, really.
Debbie Flower 11:49
Different sizes, right. Those little potatoes, little boiling potatoes or whatever they're called, would be what you'd get in your first harvest your small harvests, you'll find them at the end as well, because they're being produced over time. And so the stem potatoes produced first will be biggest and the others will will be smaller.
Farmer Fred 12:08
As far as the potatoes you grow, can you use those as seed potatoes the following year?
Debbie Flower 12:15
Technically, yes, you can. You're cloning the plant, you're basically taking a stem cutting, and so you'll get what you, you'll get the same potato that you grew the previous year, if you use your potato as a seed potato, you want to be sure that it hasn't accumulated any disease problems. And that's tricky, because when you buy a seed potato, it has gone through laboratory testing. And they can do things in that laboratory that we can't do in our backyard. So I would recommend that you go buy a new seed potato.
Farmer Fred 12:47
All right. The Master Gardeners of Santa Clara County have a nice page, and we'll put it in the show notes, about growing potatoes. And they point out that the potatoes usually mature 90 to 120 days after planting, it depends on the variety, you can harvest a few at a time, leave the rest until you're ready to eat them. And when you rob the potato plant for smaller, more tender potatoes, be careful not to damage the plant. Well, that makes plenty of sense. Like you said, don't stab them. Right? You don't want to do that. And they point out to harvest remaining potatoes when the plants wilt and turn brown.
Debbie Flower 13:26
Yeah, that's true. That's what I was initially going to say. But flowering certainly interferes with the size of the potatoes.
Farmer Fred 13:33
Do you have to keep them covered as the plant grows? If the tubers are basically surface or near the surface? Do you add more soil?
Debbie Flower 13:42
Yes, depends what you want. If a potato grows, and it's a stem, it's not a tuber. But if the potato grows near the surface and turns green, then it will start to grow its own stems, you know those eyes on that potato will germinate and you will get another stem in that location. And if that's a good thing, if it's feet away from the the main stem, then maybe you want that maybe you don't want that fat potato then will decline and will not be one that you'll be able to harvest.
Farmer Fred 14:14
I would think that any potato that's exposed to light may be rather bitter tasting. And you can see the telltale green area, can you cut out that area and eat the rest of the potato?
Debbie Flower 14:26
The food safety people say don't. And I've done it many times.
Farmer Fred 14:30
And you're still here.
Debbie Flower 14:32
I'm still here to talk about it. What's happening is, the potatoes is a stem. When it's exposed to light it can turn green, the green is chlorophyll formation, plants will only produce chlorophyll when it benefits them. And if you cover it up, that chlorophyll will potentially go away, the plant will break it down. It's valuable. The chlorophyll is made of things that are valuable to the plant for other reasons. And so we'll break it down and use the contents of the chlorophyll for something else. So all you're getting technically is chlorophyll. But the stem has now become active, is actively growing. And when it's actively growing, it also produces besides chlorophyll, something called solanine. And solanine is a chemical that can cause bitterness and in high quantities is poisonous. So that is why it's recommended that you do not eat a potato that has turned green. The green is only chlorophyll, but it does mean that stem has become actively growing, which could mean it's producing solanine, which in high quantities is poisonous.
Farmer Fred 15:32
Well, before we wrap this up, I would like you to expand upon your Don Quixote persona of explaining why a potato is not a tuber, it's a stem.
Debbie Flower 15:43
Certain plants produce underground parts for storage, so that they can live over from year to year. That's why we have perennials. Most plants we know use their roots and store food in their roots so that they can survive the hard times. But other plants have specialized structures in which they store the food, such as bulbs. An onion is a bulb tubers. What's a tuber? Yam is a tuber, I believe, and stem pieces, modified stems. Iris is another thing that has a modified stem. And it doesn't look like a potato because it's not related to a potato but it is a modified stem but that fat part that travels underground, are rhizomes. Bermuda grass has modified stems. They're not particularly thick to our eye but in the grass world, they are thick stems that travel underground and hold foods so that the plant can grow bigger and survive rough times and come back from it because it has stored food to live on.
Farmer Fred 16:41
Are you saying that Bermuda grass doesn't have rhizomes? They have modified stems?
Debbie Flower 16:46
Rhizomes are modified stems. Yeah, rhizomes and stolons are names for other modified stems. The Iris has a rhizome and rhizomes typically travel horizontally, underground, so Bermudagrass rhizomes travel side to side, Iris rhizomes travel side to side, they're fairly near the surface. But the potato stem is just formed off of the side of another stem, randomly in location. And it stores food so that if something major happens to that potato plant, it can regrow from that potato, the things that distinguish a stem from a tuber, or bulb. The easiest things to see are the fact that the stem can turn green, which a tuber and a bulb cannot. And the stem can has eyes or nodes on it, that will will grow leaves and stems from that spot, which a bulb does not. If you look at an onion, if you cut it in half, from top to bottom, you'll see what is inside. In the cooking shows I watch, they call it the core. The core of the onion is the actual stem. And it's a arc shaped, thick structure at the bottom of the onion. And at the very bottom. On the outside, you'll see a flat spot with some thick hair sort of on it. Those are the roots. So in a bulb, it's actually modified leaves that are attached to that strange stem. And if an onion grows, if you ever find one in your pantry that grows and cut it in half, you will see that the stem of that onion that's growing out the top actually started from the stem down the core of the onion, down in the bottom. It didn't come from the leaf. So these are modified to hold food. So I don't know if that's clear.
Farmer Fred 18:37
It was fun. But I just think you have an uphill battle convincing people that potatoes aren't tubers.
Debbie Flower 18:47
Well, I think the yams are tubers, beets are tubers, you can grow a yam, my mother used to do it all the time with toothpicks, hang it in a jar of water in the kitchen window. So there was always a yam growing there. And they can be grown ornamentally and they can be grown in the Sacramento garden. In order to do that they have to have a bud at the end of the plant where the tuber was attached to the plant.
Farmer Fred 19:12
Is a yam the same thing as a sweet potato?
Debbie Flower 19:14
Yes. Technically, no. But what we call a yam and a sweet potato are the same thing.
Farmer Fred 19:20
Okay.
Debbie Flower 19:21
And they are tuber and if you look at them, you don't see that spiral of eyes around them. If you see an eye it's going to be at one end, one of the skinny ends. That's where the plant was attached. That's where the tuber was attached to the plant. And if you grow it like my mother did on the kitchen window, so any buds are gonna come out of that tip. They don't have that spiral of eyes all the way down and around.
Farmer Fred 19:46
Did you plant them?
Debbie Flower 19:47
No, we lived in New Jersey. I guess we could have grown them in summer, but they would have died in winter. She just did it. I don't know. To make herself happy, I guess.
Farmer Fred 19:56
Okay. All right. Well,her last name was flower.
Debbie Flower 20:01
Not originally.
Farmer Fred 20:02
No, not originally.
Debbie Flower 20:04
She grew up in, she was very poor as a kid. Her dad was a blacksmith and they had chickens and they had a field of strawberries that we would go help harvest and he literally sold them at the side of the road.
Farmer Fred 20:19
So you have farming in your genes?
Debbie Flower 20:21
Yes, on both sides.
Farmer Fred 20:23
Well, we've learned a lot about potatoes today, Debbie Flower, thanks for your help on this.
Debbie Flower 20:27
Oh, my pleasure. Grow potatoes. They're fun.
Farmer Fred 20:35
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Farmer Fred 21:34
Here on the Garden Basics podcast we like to chat with Warren Roberts, the superintendent emeritus of the UC Davis Arboretum. He knows his plants and there are some plants that are putting on a show now, some of them are just good plants to have wherever you might happen to be. And Warren likes to choose the plants with the widest range that most of you listeners will be able to put into your garden. And Warren, for the for this episode, you have decided on the Daphne odora, the winter Daphne. And that is one of my favorite plants. It's an evergreen plant and very drought tolerant after it's established.
Warren Roberts 22:15
Yes, it is, especially if it gets afternoon shade in our warm Mediterranean climate in California. It is fairly hardy shrub, for a fairly wide range in the US for being planted. It's originally from China. It is, though, tricky. It's worth the trouble, though, because the fragrance is one of the best of all plant fragrances known. It's delicious. It's like jasmine and orange blossoms together or even better. There are 12 different selections of it (Daphne odora). The most common one grown, I think, is the one called Aureomarginata, which has yellow borders on the leaves. The leaves look kind of like bayleaf. They're about that shape. But don't mistake them because they're very, very bitter to taste and they're poisonous. The whole genus, Daphne, is poisonous. For that reason it has some species, like Daphne bholua (the Nepalese paper plant) of the Himalayas, has been used to make paper and the bark in the fibers in the bark to make twine because nothing eats it, nothing rots. So these ancient Tibetan Buddhist documents, one reason that they lasted so long as they're made of paper made out of a Daphne. And there are about 50 species, mainly Europe, and Asia. Europe has 17 of them. And this includes Alpines as well, which do bloom later and in the spring and in the summer when the when the snow recedes. The other daphnes, although some of them are really beautifully fragrant, with spicy fragrances, but they don't have the really seductive fragrance of Daphne odora. Now Daphne odora and the other Daphnes, you have to be careful with their roots when you plant them. You do not want to touch the roots, you know often when you take a shrub out of a container, you cut away the circling roots. You can't do that with a Daphne. You can't do that with Bougainvila either, and any member of the poppy family. really. You have to pretend that the roots are made of glass. So you're digging the holes deeply, so that the soil is friable, so it really likes good drainage. And then you plant it so that the top of the rootball is above the surface of the soil a bit. So when the soil sinks down, you don't get soil around the the so-called root crown, the lower parts of the stem, because that will kill the plant. Since they are hard to grow in some regards, the thing to do is plant them in different parts of the garden. And I think in order to always have Daphne around, plant one every two or three years in a different place, and then you have better chance of, of having that wonderful, seductively perfumed shrub. These fibers in the stem are very, very strong. And sometimes when they're in bloom, I am out in the Arboretum and I see where someone has tried to pick one. And you see this mangled stem, which is this dying branchlet off to the side. And it smells bad when you do that. The foliage and the stem don't smell very good. It's kind of like cashmere bouquet in that regard. Okay, so it's worth growing. It's worth taking the time. Now if you have horses and livestock, maybe not too good of an idea to have it around. Yeah, because it is quite poisonous.
Farmer Fred 25:47
I think it's an excellent container plant. The Daphne odora only gets maybe, what, four feet high, maybe a little bit higher, and about six feet wide. So for a large container on the north side of the house, especially here in California, and you leave it alone, it does fine. And I think most daphnes die from too much summer water. They actually don't require very much water in the summertime. And it is a great plant for dry shade in that regard.
Warren Roberts 26:17
Yes, it is. But it is from an area though that does get summer rain. So you do have to give it some some water for it to survive. I remember seeing a Daphne that was out on the street side in the parking strip that nobody was taking care of. And it was here in Davis. And for years and years it was just doing fine. Then we had a drought, and it died. No. So it does need some some water in the dry season. We have a relative of daphne actually native to California. It's called Dirca. And it's a very attractive little shrub just found right around the San Francisco Bay Area and the hills. The others, the daphnes of the mountains of Europe, are really tough in colder climates, and worth growing for sure.
Farmer Fred 27:12
The Sunset Western Garden Book, which is not known for its sense of humor. did say this though about the winter Daphne, quote, "so prized for its pervasive floral perfume that it continues to be widely planted despite its unpredictable behavior. It can die despite the most attentive care or flourish with little attention until you invite all your gardening friends over to admire it, at which point it promptly succumbs without warning, just to show you who's in charge."
Warren Roberts 27:44
That's pretty clever.
Farmer Fred 27:46
And very unusual for the Sunset Western garden book.
Warren Roberts 27:50
And a little sarcastic.
Warren Roberts 27:51
The winter Daphne, Daphne odora and a lot of the other Daphne varieties that can do well throughout a wide variety of climates. Check with your local nursery and see what variety of Daphne that they might carry. Warren, let's talk a little bit about the University of California Davis Arboretum. The COVID-19 situation has put its annual plant sale in sort of an online situation. And this might be something for those of you who are listening to the Garden Basics podcast, say, within 50 miles or so of Davis, to take advantage of. It's the online plant sales that are going on during April and May at the UC Davis Arboretum. It's a rather extensive list of plants, isn't it Warren?
Warren Roberts 28:37
Oh yes, there's hundreds and hundreds of different things where they're mostly grown right here in the Central Valley of California with It's a challenging climate and water (variability). So yeah, so many different kinds of things, shrubs, perennials, even a few trees and succulents.
Farmer Fred 28:56
It's a wonderful, wonderful list of plants and you can get it online. Find out more about the online plant sales going on there and the times of the sales and what you have to do to pick them up at the Arboretum website, which is arboretum.ucdavis.edu. Warren, the Plant of the Week, the Daphne, thanks so much for that.
Warren Roberts 29:18
You're welcome, Fred.
Farmer Fred 29:22
Garden Basics comes out every Tuesday and Friday and is brought to you by Smart Pots. It’s available just about anywhere podcasts are handed out. And that includes Apple podcasts, I Heart Radio, Spotify, Stitcher, Overcast, Podcast Addict, CastBox and Google podcasts. And for Northern California gardeners, check out this podcast: the Green Acres Garden Podcast with Farmer Fred, also available wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you for listening, subscribing and leaving comments. We appreciate it.
