Potatoes

[GaryD]

Hi,

Jan, who spends her days looking for opportunities to keep the economy afloat, bought some seed potatoes from Green Harvest......so I made up a small enclosure from a couple of recycled fence panels held together with zip ties.

I lined the base of the enclosure with weed mat (we have nut grass here) before putting in a couple of bags of potting mix and a bag of well-composted cow manure. I planted nine potatoes and watered them thoroughly before mulching the bed with some spoiled lucerne hay.

If the potatoes go the same way as other 'taters' that we've grown, they'll probably get poached (in the form of chat potatoes) long before they get to be very big.

In one of my less lucid moments, Jan persuaded me ("They're only a small tree") to plant a white mulberry tree in one of my concrete raised beds. Twelve months later, the seedling was 3m tall and growing like bamboo. With a great deal of effort, I managed to grub it out before it really took over.

I'm about to refurbish the raised sheet mulch garden beds. Now that we have plenty of rainwater (and even some rain) around the place, I'm going to get these beds going. Along with square foot beds, these sheet mulch beds proved to be the equal of anything I've ever seen in the way of aquaponics grow beds.

Gary

[nick]

like that idea for the raised bed, simple yet effective,


Nick

[Dufflight]

Nut grass. You need pigs. Just put the pen over the area with the nut grass and they will happly dig out the entire plant and give the soil some manure and a good turn over. There are a lot of smaller types of pigs that may work well in a backyard setup.

[GaryD]

Hi Dufflight,

I agree entirely......but the area I'm talking about is very close to my back door. What small breeds of pig would you suggest?

Gary

[Dufflight]

Miniature pot bellied. For meat you may have to go a little larger.

[djs-sa]

Hamish got some seed potatoes also from green harvest and I planted them in old tyres from the tip.

1 layer of newspaper(4-5 local rags)then a handful of hay place the tyre down then put 5 seed potatoes inside the tyre then filled with hay till just covering the spuds and the shovels of decomposted cow sh#t on top.
once growing you need to keep adding hay and cow sh#t and when you reach the top of 1st tyre you simply add another tyre on top and keep adding hay and cow sh#t

when i have time i'll take some pics to explain it better

[GaryD]

Hi Dale,

I've seen lots of people do the tyre thing but I must confess I'm a bit unsure about the stuff that is likely to leach out of tyres.

We usually grow potatoes in half plastic drums but I'm hoping that the extra light will enable us to produce more this way.

Dufflight......it would have to be a different pig to potbelly ones. Jan would never let me send one to slaughter.

Gary

[djs-sa]

Gary the potatoes dont even touch the tyres! and if u could see the inside of these tyres they look brand new
if you were worried about that issue all it would take to avoid contact would be to line the tyres with newspaper

also if ur worried gary do you think commercial potatoe havesters u stainless steel tractors to havest thier crop? let alone leaking engine oil hydrulic fluid etc etc...

why are u so worried about the tyres compared to all the chemicals farmers apply to thier crops. as I'm sure you cant say u grow all the food you eat can you?

[djs-sa]

I should also say we cut the side walls out of the tyres on both sides

[Dufflight]

Lot of people use tyres as soil gb's. Tractor ones are handy also. I don't think there would be a lot of leaching. Tyres are recycled into garden hoses(seeping) and we bury these around are plants. In AP its the closed loop that makes small amounts of stuff build up.