Harvesting Potatoes & Huge Ginger - Subtropics Australia 🥔

Do you remember that feeling as a kid when you were on a treasure hunt? All that excitement of searching around the house and the garden for hidden easter eggs on an easter egg hunt hoping you'd find the biggest and best easter egg. Well that's exactly how I feel when you grow your own food because when it's time to harvest potatoes I feel like a kid on a treasure hunt all over again. You never really know what's hiding underneath the soil and that just adds to the excitement. So today it's time to dig up our first potatoes of the year. All right so these are sabago potatoes that I planted on the 23rd of April this year. They haven't really died back much but they have been in here for 110 days and I'm way too excited to go treasure hunting for potatoes today so we're gonna do it anyway. All right I'm just gonna start by pulling these out seeing what comes up straight up. Okay I've got some good ones there already so nice nice down there. It's a good start. So I planted three seed potatoes in here. These are the sabago it's a good size. These are the sabago variety and I just got organic potatoes from the markets. So three's a good size for this plastic pot. Okay there's nothing on that so I'm gonna tip this out and see if there's any down deep. This is the best thing about growing potatoes in containers because you can just tip them out and we have a ton of Asian jumping worms that I'm going to throw on the road because I do not want these going in my garden. That looks like a seed potato. It's nice and squishy. There's another one there. Good size one. So I planted these in April when it was still very warm. We've had a very warm winter this year so I'm not expecting too much from these potatoes because it just didn't cool down that much and they prefer to grow in a cooler temperature. So it looks like that might be all we're going to get from this pot which is a little disappointing but they are decent sized so happy with that sizing. So from three seed potatoes I got five. I've been succession planting potatoes every few weeks since April so probably every two to three weeks I've been succession planting potatoes. So I think as we go on with the harvesting I think we'll get a lot more potatoes as it got cooler. The ideal time to plant them is in June. Okay so I think that's it for that one. So this is another pot of subagos planted on the same day 23rd of April. So it's been about 108 days. These plants didn't get too big so I'm not expecting much but you always get surprised with potatoes. So I think that is the seed potato. Okay so we've got a couple of small ones there. Another one there. Another two so at least we're getting a few more. They're just a bit smaller on this one. There's another two there. All right I'll tip it out. Oh there's a mushy seed potato and a crazy jumping lime. Another seed potato there. Maybe that one wasn't a seed. Oh yuck So that is it. These ones as well. So we got one two three four five six seven eight nine ten from that one so that's not too bad. A bit better than the other basket. This one is a Nicola, the variety Nicola planted on the same day. These have died back a little bit. Tiny one and again I got these ones from the organic farmers markets as seed potatoes. Okay there's one there. Not too bad. I don't want to tip this out. I think they're deep down hopefully. Okay there's one, there's one, there's one, there's one, there's one. Okay so we've got a few there. Not too bad. It's a good size one. Some small ones here. Baby one there. Some more worms that need to go. Look at it. Crazy they're like snakes. That's a seed potato. I'm assuming it is. Oh that one definitely is. It's squirted. Look at the seed potato. How gross is that. All right so we've got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve and some babies. So that one's a lot better number wise and not too bad size wise. Okay so from three buckets we planted nine seed potatoes and we got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two, thirty, forty, forty-five. About 25 potatoes. They're not a bad size. Like they're not tiny. So I'm pretty happy for the beginning harvest for the year because it's never going to be huge at this time of year. Growing potatoes in the subtropics is quite difficult and we've got a small window of three months that we can grow them and try and get big ones. So I think the next harvest that I do, the next two or three, we should see bigger potatoes and hopefully more numbers but I'm pretty happy with that for a start. So the next thing I want to harvest today is the ginger. It's been sitting in the pot waiting to be harvested for weeks now and I just haven't gotten around to it. So I'm going to harvest that and I'm going to cut it up and dehydrate it to make into ginger powder. So let's see what the ginger harvest was for the year. All right I planted three small pieces in this pot back in October last year. That looks like there's a lot in here. I'll bring you in closer. Nice piece there. Ginger is always fun as well to harvest because it's always so surprising how much it produces. Oh my goodness there is heaps in here. Wow. Look at the roots on that. My goodness. It's like it started growing again. It's been so warm. And with the recent Four Corners documentary, which I highly recommend you watching, they did some testing of the food products at the supermarkets and how true the labels are. And apparently with turmeric powder from a well-known brand it contained particles of, well basically they were using a filler of rock, the same color as turmeric. So it's not actually pure turmeric. So after seeing that I'm definitely going to be planting some turmeric this, well next month really, September and October. And I'm going to let that grow. That'll be ready around May, June next year. Then I'm going to dehydrate it and grind it into a powder. Look at that beautiful piece. So I'm glad that I grew ginger this year because I'm going to do the same because I do use ginger powder when I make banana bread. But yeah definitely growing turmeric next year. Another nice piece. Something down, there's roots down quite low so I might need to tip this out and see if there's any at the bottom. It might just be the roots. I'm pretty happy with that amount and I'll keep some to put back in to another pot next month to start growing some more. So I'm just going to quickly tip this out see if there's any more. Okay while I'm out here I just need to harvest this broccoli which is getting huge and I don't want it to separate too much. That's a beauty. How good that one is. And I need to pick some strawberries. Beautiful. So thanks for coming along with me on my first potato harvest of the year. It was a pretty good harvest. I'm pretty happy with it. We didn't get any absolute rippers but fingers crossed for the next couple of harvests that we'll get some rippers in Happy with that decent sized broccoli. If you watched my last video you'll know why I say it like that. And got a good ginger hall there. I'm going to go inside and prep that now. Slice it up, put it in the dehydrator. So I will show you that later. And a couple little strawberries there to munch on this afternoon. So thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next video. Bye!