Some of the stores have seed potatoes. I'm in the mid Willamette Valley, just a bit south of Salem Oregon. It's mid February. We will get frosts at night for at about two more months. Isn't it a bit early to be planting potatoes? Never mind that it's been raining non-stop for a few months and the ground is mud..
Northern California here, the potatoes that I missed have come up, frosts or not. Plant 'em, if you got 'em. Worse comes to worse, they'll come up later.
Ask the guys who want to sell you seed potatoes. It's probably a
800 call and it's to their advantage that you are successful. Where I am it's 'way too late for potatoes, which go in in December.wrote in news:6f- dnYOwtvTMxR7WnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@earthlink.com:
Home Depot is selling potatoes right now. They don't care when it's planting time, they just care what they can sell. A small bag with 3 or 4 spuds in it for $6-$8? Pshhh...who are they trying to kid? Anyone who plants potatoes now is going to have to mulch them heavily for the next 8-
10 weeks because that is how much longer we are going to get frosts. We got a foot of snow last April, killed off a lot of the early potatoes.
LOL! I never thought about Home Desperate! I've not been in a HD or Lowe's garden shop in years and tend to discount them. I had in mind those outfits that actually produce and sell the potatoes or the nurserymen who buy from those specialists for resale. The Internet is lousy with them. It's to their advantage to help you get good results from their products because repeat customers are where the profits are. Surely, among them is at least one that can advise you on earliest planting dates for your region.
wrote in news:ArqdnUu9wPOzmBnWnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@earthlink.com:
I go by the university extension service calendar and my own experience. They suggest April, though you can plant earlier if you are carefull to mulch and cover the plants when there is a frost. I've done that, but I got much beter results from the ones planted later in April. Just because you can plant early doesn't mean you will get good results. If you put eggplants in the ground in May and it's a cool spring (like it usually is), and you don't do anything special to keep them warm, then they will just sit there while the slugs and flea beatles eat them. I just keep them inside until it warms up in June. Then I get eggplants coming out my ears.
The extension service lumps tomatoes, squash, melons, peppers and eggplant together, but I know from experience that tomatoes will grow like crazy in cool weather where eggplants and peppers will just sit there.
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