This has become a familiar March sight: Potatoes, telling me they are ready to spring into action. That they want to nestle into the earth and convert sunlight and the elements into soft starchy spuds of all colors. Yes, once again, I will be nervous, muddy and tired, but most likely rewarded beyond measure.
Harvesting and eating potatoes from my garden kickstarts an ego trip like no other. Impressively heavy, and substantially filling, they do what a salad can't: convince you that you really could feed yourself from a sunny patch of dirt.
I started collecting these little babies last fall, from the CSA we joined. All the littlest spuds, and some of the biguns went into a paper sleeping bag for the winter. I love to peek at them for the first time months later, surprised by the length and forceful nature of their vines. It's as though they're saying, "It's time to get going again, Lassie!"
Don't all potatoes have an Irish accent? They do in my wee head.
Credit where it's due, I first heard "It's time to get going again." from Neil DeGrasse Tyson, as he kicked off the recently revived televised spacetime odyssey, Cosmos. Of course, he wasn't talking 'taters, he was picking up where this guy left off.
He and his wife wrote the original TV series, back when I was a little kid. Then, he was just a weird guy in a turtleneck, who wasn't The Electric Company, much to my dismay. Now, he is Carl Sagan, and he will always have a special place in our family's collective heart.
In making Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, Carl sought to discuss everything that is or was or will be. Not bad for thirteen episodes of a show from the eighties. It dances brightly from spectacular space photos to lively earthy snapshots of city street life on the coast of the Mediterranean. Watched all over the world for decades, Cosmos spoke the universal language of all of us, and what we know about our world; sharing all the knowledge and always making a case for learning more.
I find this beautiful, sure, but also very useful. Compiling and sharing knowledge isn't just a noble pursuit for future humans, it's how I go about trying to be more successful at the stuff I try to do, more of the time. Which brings me back to my paper bag of potatoes. I grew them wrong for the first few years, charmed by online claims that they do well in vertical situations. Plant them in a barrel! In a cardboard box! In a straw-filled mesh cylinder! In a cowboy hat! Well, that may work for some zones, and some varieties of potatoes, but I found, year after year, that my potato production was paltry, and was happening at or just above the roots. No golden rosy purple orbs growing all the way up the vine.
Surely, Carl Sagan has something helpful to say on the matter.
"It seems to me what is called for is an exquisite balance between two conflicting needs: the most skeptical scrutiny of all hypotheses that are served up to us and at the same time a great openness to new ideas."
Bingo. For whatever reason, I needed to ignore what worked for so many others and find out what worked for me. So, I dispensed with the gimmicky containers and returned to the ground under my feet, digging up a wide deep loose bed, edged with big stones.
More online digging got me thinking that I should also adjust the soil pH. Spuds love soil that has more than your average amount of free floating hydrogen ions. (aka alkaline, or basic) Where I live the soil is notoriously acidic.(aka the opposite of alkaline) Blueberries, azaleas, and rhododendrons love it, but it's bad news for potatoes. There are a few ways to amend acidic soil. I went with bone meal, mixed in with the soil in which the potatoes were planted, and to any soil mounded on the vines throughout the growing season.
mmmm, boney
What happened next was nothing short of scientific.
Only twice as many taters as before, that's what. So, I repeated the successful method last year and had an even higher yield. I was able to feed my family and had even some extras to sell at the farmer's market. I guess I sort of figured out this little corner of the cosmos.
I've encountered these truths before, so there must be something to them: That it's your job to learn from your mistakes when something isn't working; and that there is probably a path to success as you define it, as long as you're skeptical and open, humble and hard-working. This view makes mistakes into lessons. The story of your path becomes a helpful map for people you'll never meet; as long as you share it, and as long as they know when to ignore it and forge their own way.
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