Free Potatoes

 

Last winter, a few potatoes in the bag were growing sprouts, so I thought, "Hey, why not throw these in the garden and see what they do". Not only are potatoes relatively easy to grow, but they help to clear the ground of weeds; however, my main though was simply filling some empty space, adding a little crop rotation, and seeing how well they would do in this climate.

At the start of May, the haulms (stems) were looking limp and fallen over, so I thought I'd have a look and see how the potatoes were doing underneath. Imagine my surprise when I found about 5 decent spuds under each one. Thats a 500% return in about 5 months - not bad.

Of course potatoes are cheap in the grocery store, which is why I never really bothered with them until now, but there are several advantages of growing them yourself; 

First, when I buy potatoes in the grocery store, I usually eat more than I want to simply because I dont want to waste them before they go green/bad/sprout. Even then, I usually end up throwing out the last few. Having them in the garden means I can harvest just as many as I need, leaving the rest in the ground for later, so there is no waste. 

Second, the potatoes I harvest are new potatoes, which you cant get in the stores here, other than perhaps as a specialty item, for which you pay through the nose.

So for those in the Almaden Valley and similar climates near here, I'd recommend growing potatoes as follows:

(1) In Winter - anytime in November, December, January, February - if you find any potatoes sprouting in your store-bought bag, simply dig a hole in the garden, about 4-6 inches deep, and throw the potato into it and re-cover. 

(2) If you have compost (not fancy stuff, just stuff from the compost pile that is reasonably rotted), throw over the surface when you are done. This is just a convenient time to be adding compost anyway, because you're not meddling too much with plants on the surface in winter.

(3) Plant more potatoes as they become available, until you have one for every 2-person meal you're likely to want, each about a foot away from the other. Allow about a foot and a half on either side as the stems will probably fall on top of anything growing there.

(4) If you want, you can plant other winter crops in between while the potatoes get going; you should be able to get a crop of lettuce in, for example, before the potatoes smother them.

(5) Harvest from the end of April onwards, as needed in the kitchen. Remember to throw the stems on the compost pile.

(6) As long as you dont grow too many and keep growing them in the same location, year after year, you probably shouldnt get too many diseases/pests showing up. It also helps to interplant with other crops. I had some spring onions, lettuce and parsley mixed in with mine (and the bed is bounded by herbs like lemon balm and oregano).

For 5 minutes work and kitchen waste, you get a meal for 2 of great-tasting potatoes.

Potatoes should also grow well in an old compost pile if you want to let it rot down a little longer or in buckets filled with just-finished compost; they are fairly greedy feeders, so they can handle younger compost than other plants, probably.

In terms of garden management, potatoes work well with compost and/or manure in starting off the crop rotation cycle, in improving the condition of the soil. By growing them in winter, there shouldnt be too many problems in water requirements either.

First Peas

I broke new ground this year, in an area that I know is largely shaded in summer by a large tree, and dried out by its roots, but when youre limited to where you can dig, you do the best with what you have. The area used to be a vegetable plot, many years ago, presumably when the trees were smaller, so thats where my landlady wanted me to use. First, I deep dug the bed, cutting out roots and incorporating any vegetable matter I could get my hands on to about 1.5-2 feet down, and as I did this after the first rains had softened up the soil a little, it wasnt too hard. When I was finished, the surface was a couple of inches higher than previously. Into this, I planted:
16% radishes, then 16% carrots, then 16% mesclun. On the remaining 50%, a row of peas, a row of spinach and a row of lima beans. (I had wanted to use fava beans, but couldnt find any seed at the time). That was about Christmas.

Radishes (Cherry Belle): Grew great, some good roots, some useful only as salad and soup leaves.
Carrots: Miserable. Today, they are still small, about an inch high. Other carrots, including come colored ones, sown elsewhere earlier are bigger, so I'm leaving these in for now in hope. I'm not convinced these are best started in midwinter though.
Mesclun: Doing great; have had a few haircut harvests already, and expecting more. I'm being careful to cut off flowerheads that are appearing on the rocket and a spiky green. I have also transplanted some lettuces and rocket from here to another bed where they will have more room to develop.

Peas: Doing fantastic. Grew very well in the warm, sunny weather at the start of Jan, and are now flowering heavily. The first pea appeared this week, and has grown from 0.5 cm to 1.5 cm in just a few days.
Lima beans: Disaster; nothing came up. More than likely way too cold for germination.
Spinach; growing very slowly; about the size of corn salad now. Hopefully this will provide a decent crop in spring though.

Because of the failure of the Lima beans, I have transplanted some of the mesclun here, and stuffed in a line of garlic cloves; these are all doing well.

One useful point of note: In the winter, there is no shortage of light in this plot as the leaves are off the trees, and there is plenty of moisture from the rain. I can expand this area usefully, at least for winter crops.

The image above shows the pea half of the bed; To the right are the peas, then in the fallen leaves, some tiny spinach, then the line of garlic (the grassy leaves) together with some large mesclun plants, and you can see a kohlrabi plant I stuck in at lower left (a vegetable I bought but didnt use in time, so I stuck it in outside to regrow).