Thursday, March 1, 2012

No-dig potatos

I am not really able to dig any longer, my back and legs will NOT do it, and so I have not raised potatos for the past couple of years.

The LAST time I raised potatos I just dumped grass clipping on them so that I would not have to put a shovel into the ground, but that worked poorly: the grass clipping composted and many of the potatos turned green. It was an effort to dump the armfulls of grass clippings on top of the potatos, and because the plants grew so very well I simply could not SEE that the grass clippings needed topping off! Though, with the big plants I am not certain that I could have topped thm off anyways!

I have also tried to raise them in a raised bed with a loose soil medium so that I could simply stick my hand down and take the spuds: this worked but my yield was poor. I cannot manage a large garden-yet- and it would have taken up too much room to get a meal or three of potatos.

I now have a better idea!

I have some woven greenhouse flooring left over. If I presprout the potatos, and let them shoot up about 6 inches, then I can put the woven flooring over them and let just the tip of the plant peek out. Since potatos form ABOVE the seed potato, the potatos should form directly beneath the woven barrier. That means that to harvest them, I can peel back the woven barrier and I should be able to see most of the potatos. I can get them with a trowel or something similar. My arms work fairly well and so this sounds like something that might work out well for me.

To keep the weeds down, I can overlap the woven barrier with the barrier that is already down, and let the tip of the plants poke out between the layers. Hm. That means that I need more than 6 inches of sprout if I am going to get a good yeild: I had better keep the spuds inside until the sprouts are closer to a foot long!

There are now about 7 pounds of seed potatos in my kitchen: I hope that they sprout quickly! Spring is early here, and the soil will soon be warm! I will post in June? if this works or not!

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