Mostly we grow potatoes in the garden beds along with everything else, in a hodgepodge "arrangement" often called polyculture. But last year there were lots and lots of potatoes, and Risa did not find them all, so at planting time this year there were too many to plant, both because we didn't manage to eat much more than half of what we'd stored, and volunteers were coming up in the beds. What to do?
Back where she used to work, they got in a hundred new computers, and called her up to come and get the empty boxes. Aha!
Risa flattened and spread the boxes on a disused space in the west "pasture," spread leaves and straw on the boxes, spread chitted potatoes on the straw, and heaped more straw, in humps, over the potatoes. It's a ways away from nearly everything else, so she knew she wouldn't be irrigating much, and said "good luck" to the new spud patch and moved on to the next item on her list.
Come September and the threat of rain, and she remembered the spuds and went to have a look. A few of the chits, perhaps a higher proportion than in the garden, had failed to crop at all. The rest produced a mixed bag of tiny, small, medium and decent-sized potatoes, plus several giants.
It wouldn't be much to write home about, except that, yes, there's more than she started with; besides which this crop represents little more than no labor from a patch of sod, beneath which the soil is very stony. As she raked over the bed with her potato hook, she found much of the cardboard intact, and beneath it, lots of moss not quite dead yet. Very few vegetables could have made so much of such a new and sour spot. It didn't even attract earthworms, something cardboard does almost anywhere you put it.
But the potatoes grew! If those in the garden do no better than these, we should still have a very decent spud year, with plenty to have over the winter and plenty to plant. If you find yourself with extra sprouted potatoes on hand and a full garden, you can try this. Amaze your friends! Influence people! -- with your mysterious "Potatoes from Nowhere."
What a nice haul of potatoes!!And all the more so because of the method. We have to be inventive, don't we?
ReplyDeleteWhat a great idea!
ReplyDeleteFollowing my own link back, I'm reminded that I put down the cardboard and bags of leaves a long time ahead of the spuds and straw. In the garden all this would have rotted down considerably by the time the spuds got there, but the new spot is so stony the worms never really showed up. It does help for the cardboard to get a few months of rain, though; otherwise the spuds might have trouble rooting through. But it was practically instant potatoes... I also successfully grew some Buckskin bush beans there. Can we think of any other crops that would put up with such conditions?
ReplyDelete