Donna,

Congrats on being able to check off the item of the To Do list that said "plant potatoes".

I feel iike I planted potatos forever this year, first using biointensive spacing in a raised bed in the Peter Rabbit garden because the big garden was a big lake, and then later on planting four long rows in the highest, most well-draining ground in the big garden. It took me so long that I felt like I was late by the time I finished, though I really wasn't. Not watering them in is fine. They'd likely do fine even if you never watered them in. The water and energy stored in the seed potatoes gives them everything they need to get started growing and it will sustain them for quite a while too. I think it is likely the rain will water them fine in the next day or two or three.

If I haven't forgotten any of the varieties I planted, then this year we are growing: Red Pontiac, Blue Adirondack, Kennebec, Norkotah, and Yukon Gold. I planted too many, but I will not regret that until I am having to dig all of them up on a hot summer day! Then I will tell myself sternly "do not over-plant next year", and then next year, I will plant too many again. In the garden, I am nothing if not predictable.

After I had finished planting all my potatoes, I got a late potato catalog in the mail, which gave me the urge to order 8 or 10 more varieties---but I resisted. It probably is a good thing the catalog arrived after I planted, and not before. I just might order some of the varieties in it that appeal to me and hold them in cold storage for late summer planting for a fall harvest.

Our ground is still wet just a few inches below the soil surface, so I'd be fine if it doesn't rain---but based on our forecast, it is likely to rain on Thursday at the very least and possibly on other days as well. I always get antsy when it is too wet to plant, mostly because we usually have the opposite problem and are too dry.

My whole garden is ready to plant...every bed is currently weed-free, the soil has been amended, etc. and I'm just waiting for the right air and soil temps. All the cool-season stuff is just about done, and it is a tad too early for the warm-season stuff. Nothing makes me happier than planting, except maybe harvesting and eating the produce.

I have saved a ton of "inside gardening chores" for the rainy day or days. I have tons of seedlings to pot up into larger pots, many more seeds to start, containers to plant, and am building some raised beds in the greenhouse so I can experiment with growing things in it. I'd rather be outside on any day of the week, but since rain around here often means dangerous thunderstorms, I have to be content with chores that can be done in the greenhouse or potting shed or in the garage or sunroom. I'm not a huge rainy day fan, but after far too many days without rain last summer, I welcome every drop that falls.

If this wind doesn't stop blowing, it may blow all my rain here in Marietta straight north to you in Norman and may blow your rain sideways into Kansas.

Dawn

Congrats! I finally got my potatoes planted, too. I think this is the only thing I've done on time ... ever. It was so windy as I was sifting the rocks out of the dirt I was completely coated. I probably have potatoes growing in my ears.

Dawn : Ditto

I do hope that I am able to meet the two of you later this spring, although you won't be able to hear me with potatoes bulging out your ears.

Donna in Norman who is bummed about the cold (okay, cool) rainy weather and wants to be outside planting stuff

How do you guys store your crop? I buy the 15lb. sack of baking pot. at Sams and sometimes they sprout before I can get them eaten,so, how do you store large amounts to make it worth growing them. Does everybody on this forum have a root cellar? I've noticed alot of you raise them so there has to be some way I havent thought of. I have the same question about onions.

Thanks from Terry alias Telow

Terry,

I mostly store them in my tornado shelter, which indeed does double as a root cellar. Someday I want to build a real root cellar but I am not really sure I'll ever be able to talk my husband into that.

In a dry year I can leave them in the ground for months after they mature, essentially storing them right there in the garden. I can't do it in a wet year though, and it does mean I cannot plant a succession crop in the potato bed.

We have a big walk-in pantry under the staircase in our home and I can keep potatoes and onions there quite a long time.

Remember that when you buy potatoes from the store, it is likely they have been held in cold storage for many months before you bought them, so they are not going to store unsprouted for as long as your own home-raised potatoes will since they are months younger.

In the tornado shelter, I keep the potatoes in flat cardboard boxes or plastic storage totes, and I keep an eye on them so that if any start sprouting or going bad I can get them out of there.

With onions, I use several different methods for storage.

First of all, after I dig them, I line them up on folding tables on the patio (which is covered) and cure them for about 3 weeks. The longer they cure (up to a point), the longer they seem to store well.

Then, I handle them in different ways, including all of the below:

I send a bunch to work with my son who is a professional firefighter. They work 24-hour shifts and cook their own meals during their shifts. Sometimes I send enough to work that his co-workers can take the extras home with them. I can get rid of a bunch of them this way.

I pile them up in plastic bins or cardboard boxes and put them in the tornado shelter.

I store them in netting tubes purchsed from Dixondale Farms. The first time I bought the netting tubes, they were green. The last batch I bought were red. The tubes are 10' long and you put an onion in the tube then do something to tie it off. I normally use twisty-ties saved from bread sacks, or you can use zip ties. Then, you put another onion in, tie it off, add another onion, etc. The slight separation between the onions keeps them from rotting where they touch because moisture might get trapped between two onions where they touch. When you have a tube filled, it looks like a lumpy, bumpy snake. I hang them from the top shelf of a set of shelves I have in the tornado shelter for food storage. When I run out of onions in the house, I go out to the tornado shelter and get an entire tube of onions and bring it inside and hang it up in the pantry.

I chop up a lot and slice up a lot, put them in little zip-lock bags in 1/2 cup and 1 cup portions, but the little zip-lock bags in bigger freezer zip lock bags, and freeze them. Right now I have about a 3 year supply of onions in the freezer from last year's bumper crop. I use the frozen ones in cooking.

Sometimes I dehydrate some into little flakes in my dehydrator, but it takes a really long time and the house doesn't smell nearly as good as it does when I am dehydrating tomatoes.

Most short-day and intermediate day onions are sweet onions and they are not supposed to store as well as the long-day onions that are more pungent, so for most of those, we're told they will store for 2 to 4 months. However, when well-cured and in a dry year, I have had them store 6 to 8 months and if it was a really dry year, for as long as 10 months before they start sprouting. If they start sprouting in winter, I take them out and plant them under the pecan tree that is beside my garden. When they bloom in spring, their flowers will attract tons of little beneficial insects and pollinators.

If any go bad, I throw them on the compost pile.

I'm in far southcentral OK and we often have very low humidity for months in the dry years, and I suspect that the low humidity contributes to the long storage times I have with the onions. In more humid areas, they might not store as long.

Dawn

Thank you Dawn for your comprehensive answer. I have a storm shelter but it faces the west and has a metal door and during 100+ degree weather got quite warm. The top of the shelter is exposed concrete and I'm thinking about covering it with a foot of dirt or large rocks to insulate it. Of course I need to leave room for the fam. during May and june.LOL. Most of the metal door can be insulated and painted white instead of the dark grey it is now. It sounds like alot of work so I think I'll go set in my recliner and think about it. Austa La Squeegee all

Terry, You're welcome. We have soil covering all of the sides of our tornado shelter, but not the top. However, I have a trumpet creeper vine that covers the top of it (and the sides as well) and keeps it really well shaded. I just have to be really serious and persistent about trimming the vine back from the door so we can open the door at any time a tornado threatens. So, our tornado shelter in summer looks like a big mass of trumpet creeper vine with only a door showing.

We always joke that if we get hit by a tornado and debris is piled up on top of the door to our shelter, we can survive on potatoes and onions until someone finds us and clears the debris off the door.

Dawn

Thanks for the storage explanation, Dawn. We are having a storm shelter installed -- well, we were, but the guy has not called us back -- anyway, we intend to use it as a root cellar as well.

telow, good point about the storm cellar heating up. I just assumed that because they are underground that wouldn't happen. I will be sure that we put it in a shady place.

It's sunny outside, but I haven't even stuck my nose out yet to see what the temp is. I hope I can get some more seeds planted today. My tomatoes, or at least some of them, have sprouted! I am a little worried about one flat that I think I had sealed up too well. I have taken the plastic off and put the grow light about an inch above it. I hope the little darlings stick their heads up!

Donna in Norman where there is a flea market at the Fairgrounds calling her name

Donna,
I also thinking to install storm-shelter as multipurpose room. I also called one of the company from OKC, no response yet. I just wonder do you have contact info for storm-shelter companies in Norman? -Chandra

Chandra, Our shelter is above ground and is attached to the house. If we keep the door closed it stays fairly cool, but we tend to use it just like another room and go in an out a lot so the door gets left open. Since it has no openings, and the walls are very thick, it doesn't stay a lot cooler than the house overall, but the floor always seems to be cool. I did keep potatoes and onion on the floor there, and they lasted quite a while, but it is not going to give you the storage life of a root cellar or underground shelter. I put my potatoes in the plastic web trays that are the size that fit inside seedling trays. I turned one upside down on the floor to provide air flow, then added one tray with a layer of potatoes, then one web tray turned upside down over it, etc., so all would have air flow. It worked very well until I forgot the last half of a tray, and they grew some pretty long stems. LOL

Also, your shelter needs to be built in accordance with FEMA Publication 320. Call Federal Emergency Management Agency in OKC or just Google. They have a library on-line and you can download the pub, or you can order the booklet in hard copy or CD. Your contractor will probably need a hard copy. Keep in mind as you plan that the outside dimensions will be much larger than the inside because your walls will be very thick. I hope you can find a contractor who has built several and will certify that he is building to meet the FEMA standards. The FEMA engineers were impressed with our shelter.

I have always remembered the people that got trapped inside their underground shelter in Moore after the big tornado and were not found for a few days although they were perfectly safe. Our thick metal door opens to the inside so debris can't keep us from opening it. We also have food for several days and a rack that holds 3 five gallon bottles of water. You can buy a dolphin pump that fits on top of a bottle to make the water available to drink. I think I paid about $20 for ours, and bought it at the company that supplies our bottled water. We have a cooler that uses five gallon bottles so we buy water all of the time. The cooler isn't in the shelter, but as we replenish our water supply, we store it in the shelter rack, so it is always being rotated. We also keep camping equipment, bottled juice, a camping potty (still in the original box), tools, tarps, and a filing cabinet where we store important papers, such as land deeds, birth certificates, passports, and our family genealogy records.

Tornadoes are not a new thing in Oklahoma so we have all probably seen the aftermath if not been involved in one. I remember lots of trees up-rooted, roofs lifted off of houses, and minor damage when I was young. In recent years I have seen the aftermath of Moore, Bridgecreek, Pitcher, Lone Grove, near Neosha MO, and the horrible destruction in Joplin and these are major life changing, or life ending, events, so I feel a shelter has become a necessity. If you can benefit from using your shelter for storing food, then that is all the better, but it shouldn't be a decision breaker. If you live in Oklahoma or surrounding states, then a shelter is not a luxury.

Even for a small shelter above ground, your cost is going to start around $10,000, so it will be 3 times what a pre-fab underground installed shelter would be. The ideal situation is to have them built into a new house as part of the original house. We have friends who have a bedroom in the center of their house that is built as a shelter.

Our room is small, 10x12 outside, but we keep the chairs folded when not in use, and could all stand if we needed to stuff more people inside. So far, the most we have had is three families here. Since tornadoes don't last long, you normally are sheltered for just a short time. We just try to keep enough gear in ours that we could survive on our property in an emergency status if our house got blown away.

Be very cautious in choosing a contractor to build an above ground shelter. If you need more info, just let us know.

Carol,

Thank you very much for great info. It sounds above ground / half below ground option sounds better even thought it may cost more. As you you suggested I need to look FEMA and HOA recommendations, better builders.

If often confuses me when I see all new homes built here in Norman/OKC won't have storm shelter. All most all houses in our 2008 build new neighborhood won't have storm shelter. Last year when tornado warming up, we all ran into a nearby church for the shelter. I felt that time, we should have one for sure this year, but keep getting postponed, but its high time we need one soon. Yes its not luxury but very necessary, I cant run with three kids, wife and parents to public shelter when dozens of tornadoes touched ground in all directions.

If anyone recommended a storm shelter builder around Norman/OKC would be nice.

regards -Chandra

Chandra, I sent you an email about this, let me know if you do not receive it.

Donna

Donna,

Yes, I got your email. Thank you for info.

regards -Chandra

Thanks for that awesome info! We, too, have a storm shelter and will be using it for dual purposes. I was wonder how to store everything. I need to get down there and clean it out with a bit of alcohol. It sat idle with a lot of water in it for years.

Yesterday my first potato plant foliage popped up above the soil line. They're in a trench, so I'll be adding soil regularly to fill in the rest of the trench, but it is nice to see the foliage emerge and to know that they are growing.

Hey Chickencoupe, if I were going to clean out a storm shelter it would definately require a little alcohol.lol