Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy! My favorite gardening time is when it’s time to plant taters (that’s “potatoes” to all you non-southern folk). Potato planting always marks the start of the serious gardening season for me.
According to my handy-dandy planting guide from the North Carolina Department of Agriculture, potatoes can be put into the ground here in the western part of the state beginning in early March. According to my equally handy-dandy Farmer’s Almanac though, the best days for planting root crops in March is between the 24th and the 28th. And I do believe in planting by the phase of the moon. There’s usually a pretty good reason for most folklore so I’m faithfully planting according to the Farmer’s Almanac.
I ordered three varieties of seed potatoes from Sow True Seed, a really cool seed company located in Asheville, North Carolina. I ordered Kennebec, Pontiac Red and Austrian Fingerling.
I chitted the potatoes (that means putting them in a warm, well lit spot to let the eyes develop into sprouts). About a week before planting, I will cut the larger seed potatoes into two pieces. This way I get more potato plants and, therefore, more potatoes. Once cut, the seed potatoes need that week’s time to “heal over” on the cut area to prevent them from rotting in the ground. Then all you do is plant and anticipate!
Plant. Hhmm . . . that’s a problem here on this little half acre of rock. There’s no soil and all my raised bed areas are already spoken for with other vegetables. With enough time, soil can be built up but I don’t have time because I want potatoes NOW! The solution? Straw bale gardening. There’s an excellent book on the subject named – appropriately enough – Straw Bale Gardening Complete, by Joel Karsten. I’m going to try this method for the first time with a few different vegetables, including potatoes.
According to the author, potatoes do exceptionally well in straw bales. And there seem to be several advantages for employing this method. First, you have instant “soil” because most vegetables grow quite well in this medium. Second, harvesting is simple. As the straw bale decomposes, you simply cut the baling string and pick up clean, dirt free potatoes. The third (and most important to me) advantage is that after the harvest I can add the decomposing bales to my compost pile or add them to the existing raised beds or (my plan) leave them right where they are and add compost and leaves over the fall and winter to form the basis for next year’s new raised beds.
Here are the straw bales for my potatoes. I’ve located them on a sunny, southwest facing slope that gets sun almost all day. I will begin “conditioning” the bales in a few more days. According to Mr. Karsten in his book, this process takes about twelve days and it starts the decomposition of the bales. The decomposing bales are a medium that the potatoes thrive in. Sounds easy enough. Anyone out there who has tried this method, please chime in – I’d love to hear your thoughts!
Stay tuned and we’ll keep you posted on our progress!
