Gardening accessories for growing potatoes can prove useful. Potatoes are starchy tuber growing underground. As they mature, they swell and get larger. Some say they grow 100 pound in a 4 square foot garden area by covering the plants in layers as the greens shoot up.

Garden seed potatoes aren’t really seeds. They are full-size potatoes that are allowed to start producing shoots in the potato eyes. You’ve probably seen this happen when you’ve stored potatoes in the kitchen for too long. Planting potatoes from the grocery store is a gamble. Some individual potatoes are treated with a growth inhibitor to keep them from sprouting so you need to wash them. Buying bulk potatoes usually don’t have growth inhibiters.

About one or two weeks before planting put your seed potatoes in a warm place at about 60 to 70 degrees in bright sunlight to activate sprouting. You can put your seed potatoes in a basket or in egg cartons.

The day before you plant you potato garden, cut the seed potatoes into about 2 inch cubes with each cube having at least 2 eyes. Store them overnight in an egg carton exposed to the air. This will hasten a callous that prevents the seed potato from rotting in the ground.

Try to keep a list of garden jobs on a card to do during March, and hang it where you don’t lose it so you’ll be sure to get the jobs done when time and weather permits in the East.

The bed south of our sun porch is a problem; it is in the heavy shade of a shellbark hickory, also shaded by a huge honeysuckle. It is not only shaded, but it’s dry. I find that even with watering it is rather hard to keep primroses alive in this spot so I am going to use it as a place to try out some of the named varieties of lily turf that I got last fall. I have ‘Majestic,’ ‘Lilac Beauty,’ ‘Monroi White,’ and Silver Ribbon. These are all varieties of liriope. They can take shade, rather dry growing conditions, and also the birds. The planting is just under the hanging bird feeder and the birds, especially sparrows, going after the food they throw out, are rough on tender plants like primroses.