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.

The sowing season; first bush beans sown

Things are moving fast at the moment; seedlings are popping up all over the place; all their heirlooms sown a week or so ago are showing, pretty much close to a 100% germination rate. Everything else in the same tray - white sage, cilantro, summer savory - are also looking strong, except the later sowing of zucchini, which havent shown yet. Yesterday, Mar 16, I sowed 6 pots of Bush Beans "top crop", and from now on, I hope to sow more beans every week or so. Today I'm pre-soaking some "Insuk's Wang Kong" (or, as I fondly call it, "Insuk's Giant Wang"). These are supposedly heat-resistant runner beans, something extremely important here in Almaden Valley. This is just the first wave - I picked out six of the blackest seeds to sow, and will harvest some of these as seed for next year. I'll also keep some of the pinkest ones together and save the pinkest seed from them. No particular reason other than tinkering with evolution.

Everything else is doing well now, the first pea sowing in the allium bed is showing plenty of flowers given the few plants that survived the ?slugs? and even a pod. The first Fava sowing is showing nice flowers now (about a foot high), and the second sowing is several inches high.

I am taking apart the winter compost heap at the moment - everything is unrecognizably black, but its still a little clumpy - and spreading it over the bed by the fence. The worms and rain should take it in, and it will protect the soil somewhat. I'm attempting to convert to no-till, but I'm not convinced on that yet. I'm not a purist though, I'm still digging in some stuff like chicken bones (from stock) to provide phosphates and calcium while avoiding rats etc. Overall, my goal is to make this ground the richest, blackest, most friable topsoil you ever saw, at the same time saving a load of rubbish from the county waste pickup system. I firmly believe that there is a massive crunch coming in terms of civilization, largely tied to the end of peak oil, and that we need to start thinking as locally as possible. Disposing our garbage as close as possible, and harvesting our food as close as possible. Of course, presently there are limits to what is acceptable in the urban environment, so I'm mainly limiting myself to composting grass clipping, street leaves and vegetable trimmings. But the day will come when we no longer discard our own manure and foul up some faraway place with it. Instead, it will be growing massive amounts of great food. I also foresee backyards with chickens and rabbits providing protein and wonderful eggs. Some people in San Francisco are even raising mealworms for human consumption. Like I say, there are limits.

Summer Winds is selling nice square wood planting fixtures, about 5-foot by 5-foot by one foot high that you can fill with soil/compost/etc. for raised beds. They look good, but at $60? $80? (I can't remember) they ain't cheap. The design is simple though, maybe worth building something with wood from Home Depot? The main advantage I suppose is that you dont have to dig - just stick it on the soil and fill.