Potato Harvest
Oct. 2nd, 2012 07:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
halifaxearthtechIt's a familiar story. You didn't intend to grow potatoes in your garden but April came around and you were left with a bag of sprouted ones, pale necks yearning and straining towards life and you take pity on the potatoes and plant them. This time of year is like a second kind of Easter egg hunt.
I put these ones in a raised bed that was filled with fresh Bengal Lancers horse manure. This is part of my project to fill my raised beds without buying soil. A lot of soil available for purchasing can come from questionable sources: slow-to-replace peat moss strip-mined from bogs, biosolids, or sometimes the topsoil from a bankrupted farmer's field. And there is no need to buy it, if you are able to sit tight for a year or two. Just look at this finished product after only one year!
I eschewed the shovel and easily sifted through the raised bed with my hands. By the way, Bengal Lancers are always pleased to give manure away for free to anyone who asks nicely as they have to pay to have it removed.
Of course I have no idea what variety these guys are, I think they were the tail end of the Ecology Action Centre root cellar project, so they were organic and purchased locally. These will tide me over until the next root cellar purchase and are going to go into some veggie pate. And yes, I dug up my potatoes in the dark. The shorter days are catching me by surprise. And I'm kind of a goth, ok?
I want to see a side-by-side trial of raised beds filled with mulch and potato towers, to see if the potatoes planted into a tower that is already filled burrow down all the way and make just as many tubers as the potato that has mulch piled around it higher and higher all year.
I put these ones in a raised bed that was filled with fresh Bengal Lancers horse manure. This is part of my project to fill my raised beds without buying soil. A lot of soil available for purchasing can come from questionable sources: slow-to-replace peat moss strip-mined from bogs, biosolids, or sometimes the topsoil from a bankrupted farmer's field. And there is no need to buy it, if you are able to sit tight for a year or two. Just look at this finished product after only one year!
I eschewed the shovel and easily sifted through the raised bed with my hands. By the way, Bengal Lancers are always pleased to give manure away for free to anyone who asks nicely as they have to pay to have it removed.
Of course I have no idea what variety these guys are, I think they were the tail end of the Ecology Action Centre root cellar project, so they were organic and purchased locally. These will tide me over until the next root cellar purchase and are going to go into some veggie pate. And yes, I dug up my potatoes in the dark. The shorter days are catching me by surprise. And I'm kind of a goth, ok?
I want to see a side-by-side trial of raised beds filled with mulch and potato towers, to see if the potatoes planted into a tower that is already filled burrow down all the way and make just as many tubers as the potato that has mulch piled around it higher and higher all year.
no subject
Date: 2012-10-11 02:32 am (UTC)