Monday Notes and Tater talk.......
Well Kids, The week started in a semi normal way today. This is a nice change from the recent bucket of ass that's been visiting here recently.
Normal and uneventful is A-OK with me.
Other than the fact that medical bills are gonna send me to the poor house everything is cool.
I planted Potatoes today. I'm gonna have an ass load of Taters this year.
I planted 3 kinds. Standard Kennebeck, Red Pontiac and Yukon Gold. One bed of each. Beds are 4'x12'.
Here's how I grow Taters. I plant them sorta shallow and as they start growing I cover the growth with a mix of soil and straw.
I leave a little bit of green sticking out. Taters and Tomatoes (and maybe some others) will send out roots from any part of the stalk that gets buried. What this means with Taters is that from these roots there will be more taters than just the ones from the original start. This is a good thing.
Keep burying that growth till about the end of June or the beginning of July. You'll get layers of Taters all the way up. Kinda like adding vertical layers of growth.
I used to get scrap pallets and screw them together and grow 'em in those. You can get a nice pile from a small area using this method.
I'll put a few posts around the Tater beds and string some chicken wire around them to hold things together as I build up the whole mess.
Besides getting a lot more Taters from the same area, another advantage to this is that it is easy as heck to harvest them. Just pull the wire or pallets apart and rake the pile out. The only ones you'll have to dig are those on the bottom and if you plant them shallow it's not much digging.
Some people use old car tires this same way. Just add a tire and soil/straw mix as things grow up.
One thing to remember - Make sure that no Sunlight gets on the taters. So cover them well as you go. Sunlight makes Taters turn green and the green ones are not safe to eat.
OK. You got that?
So you can grow taters even if you only have a small space.
It doesn't take a lot of space to grow a lot of food. With just a bit of creativity you can grow a lot of diffent things in a small space.
As far as getting seed taters, I've just gone to the grocery store and bought what they had and used them before. So unless you're picky about a particular type, it's not really necessary to order them.
There's lots of ways that you can utilize the space you have to grow some good food. I had a heck of a productive garden and yard when I lived in town. We grew a huge amount of things on our little 1/4 or 1/3 acre city lot. Including fruits and English Walnuts.
If you want to see how productive you could be, check these guys out. - Little Homestead in the City
Don't let all the California, HippyShit detour you. These guys have got a fabulous place and may be on the cutting edge of what home food production is all about.
It's obvious that these people have been doing this for awhile and have it figured out. I can't imagine how many years it's taken them to get this proficient and productive. PLUS. It really looks nice.
Screw cutting grass. Grow something that tastes good.
I have to admire people who go into projects like this and excel in this way. Think about what you could do with 5 acres?
As you can guess, I have been.
Gratuitous Picture of the Day -
