The most delicious potatoes are, of course, those grown on your own plot. The time is approaching when you will be able to dig up some bushes from the “forty days” to fry or boil them with dill.
Just don’t rush and do it with a shovel or pitchfork. After all, it often happens that you dig up a bush and there are two large potatoes and the rest are still the size of a pigeon egg. They still have to grow and grow.
There is a simple digging technique that will allow you to get a rich crop and only large potatoes.
A simple digging technique
If the soil is soft, it will be enough to dig your hand into the soil next to the shrub and feel a large tuber. Separate it from the bush and move on to the next one.
With this approach, the plant does not suffer and continues to grow. Conversely, the remaining small potatoes will now receive more nutrients and grow faster.
If the soil is hard, then you should use some sort of wooden shovel and rake the soil around the bush. Assess the situation and also separate the large tubers. It is advisable to separate by unscrewing, instead of pulling hard, so as not to alter the root structure of the entire shrub.
It is not recommended to take more than 2-3 tubers from a shrub at a time.
If the potatoes are planted in high beds, in this case there will be no problem finding large potatoes.
After “removal,” spray the soil and water if necessary.
Of course, this will take longer than simply digging up a shrub with a shovel. But at the same time, those tubers that simply wouldn’t be eaten will be able to continue growing.
What is better not to do?
There are recommendations that you can dig up a bush, collect large potatoes, and plant the tips with “peas.” For these purposes, use a pitchfork to damage the plant’s roots as little as possible.
First of all, you should put a lot of effort into removing the potato nest from the ground and not damaging the roots.
Second, the authors of the method recommend planting a shrub with small things in a deeper hole so that the tops don’t fall apart. It is already difficult to imagine how potatoes will develop at great depths and in a month they will grow from the size of a “plum” to at least a “chicken egg”. The shrubs will need at least a week to take root. And a week is a long time, especially for regions with a short summer.
But the manual digging method is justified and allows for a good harvest of large, “even” potatoes.
