This is the third and final part depicting - mainly in pictures - my experiment to grow tatties in the front garden. Links to earlier parts where I cleared the ground, made it dog-proof, constructed a stone terrace and planted the tatties, are below:
May 2021
I pick up again just as the little potato shoots are making themselves known. How exciting!
June 2021
As May rolls into June, and the little ones grow to a few inches in height, I earth them up with a mixture of compost and the groovy horseshit I had gathered from the bridal paths nearby. This is to give them more space in which to multiply, for the original soil has a lot of clay and is pretty dense. A dung beetle, lost and far from home, trudges through the poop.
I repeat the earthing-up process two or three times as required, delighting in the growth of the little tatties. @flamistan watches from her spot under the hedge, on the other side of the dog-proof fence.
July 2021
The Summer is now high and the plants keep getting bigger and bigger, their leaves catching the rays and strengthening the stems. These guys are thirsty and the number of water buckets required to satisfy them keeps increasing. I eventually locate the garden hose and that saves me a lot of energy.
August 2021
Sun, water and TLC have resulted in some pretty filled-out potato plants which reach up to and above chest height. The potatoes come into flower and the plants are at their peak, a very fine sight.
However, all things pass! Once the flowers die the plant itself begins to wind down and the leaves start to wither. The withering of the plants mean harvest time for Barge. I dig into the soil, taking a few plants at a time and having great fun seeing the layers of tatties strung together. At a rough estimate I got around 40-50 kilos of tatties from the 30-odd plants I had growing in the ground, boxes and bags.
NOWvember 2021
And I have still got some left! They'll probably last until the end of the year and they are YUM!
All images @barge | Thanks for visiting 🙏
| Camera | Nikon D200 |
|---|---|
| Lens | Nikon AF-S 40mm f2.8 MG |
| Location | Edinburgh, Scotland |
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Many thanks 🤗
Hey bro,
I really love this potato gardening post. The way you showed the progression of growth with the time lapse of photos is really cool, and the visual aspects are really beautiful and magical as always.
I'm a huge potato lover myself and these potatoes look so healthy and delicious. You really know your stuff when it comes to potato gardening!
Cool photo of @flamistan peeking out at Hyumi @barge too haha. ;D
Thank you for sharing with us. 🤗
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That would be sooo kewl brother, I would feel so lucky to enjoy your potato dish! I would love for you to try my homegrown cannabis as well! And mebbe at this point I will have some homegrown mushrooms we can enjoy together too! 🤗
oh man, these look delish...and you wrote so engagingly about...potatoes! wow, you got beautiful plants and an amazing crop. So do you not keep covering your tattie plants as they grow? I read that you need to do this but maybe that's just nonsense lol. I bought some potato grow bags (those stand up canvas type things) ...I wonder how well that will work compared to the open ground? I'll definitely have to read more of your stuff @barge. I think I'm going to enjoy being friends with @flamistan's hyumi ;-)
....sure thing! That's the 'earthing up' process and it's far from nonsense lol. When I was in Portugal, with the soil so rich and fertile, it wasn't done coz the tatties were able to find themselves enough room underground to spread. Here in UK it's pretty common though, and where I am the ground has a lot of clay and is dense. The earthing up (I did it 2-3 times) means you can have a couple of layers of tatties rather than just a flat spread.
I reckon your grow bags should work just fine - a bit of earth on the bottom followed by seed tattie(s). Cover them with earth and let the shoots get a few inches high before covering again (and then again once they are another few inches, until you get to the top). It should work as well as the open ground IMO :)
one of the tattie fields in Portugal
Thanks so much for your interest Sam, here's an old blog index
🤗🙏 in case you'd like to explore. It's from before I met @flamistan lol.
It's amazing how you have the whole process from planting to harvest, with dates and good pictures. I love potatoes and I know how difficult it can be to harvest them, depending on the weather and conditions of course.
I love this post and missed your pictures, my friend. Greetings and blessings ☺️
These guys were fun to harvest and not a lot of work. When I was in Portugal though, I once spent 2 days digging out a field of potatoes in the hot sun - that was tough :)
Thanks for your continued personal and curative support Pavan, it's a pleasure to read your comments.
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It must be very nice to enjoy vegetables from your own garden, you can feel the sweat drops that have been passed for quite a long time. But after enjoying it, we will be very grateful to be able to enjoy it.
Thankyou for sharing :)
Ha ha spot on Aswita, the pleasure of eating your own produce is something else :D
These potatoes look very delicious. Greetings from the Philippines!
They are indeed and I'm still enjoying what I have left. If kept in the dark they can easily last 10 months. Thanks for stopping by 👍
You're welcome (^_^)
Love it! Great photo essay Barge!
Thanks Cams 🤗
from here in case you missed it first time round. I cannay mind what I'd put in Ruski through Goog.trans lol
You had a good crop of potatoes this past year!
Potatoes are one of my favorite food crops to grow, and to eat, of course.
Ya it's hard to go wrong with potatoes :D. Thanks for stopping by!
What a good read. Thank you for the effort.
You mentioned that the plants needed lots of water. I'm almost sure you know this, but have you thought about covering the soil, perhaps with bark mulch (don't know if this is good, but have seen it done more often) or even planting the potatoes inside other plants?
I made an interesting discovery this year. I took two bought pots of basil outside and planted one pot in the soil in the middle of the flower bed we had established, where I thought it had little chance of survival (ignorant as I am) and the other in a pot outside the front door, along with some mini roses. The basil plant I put in the soil with the others in the bed already looked very battered and was getting yellow leaves.
To my great astonishment, however, the plant recovered and even got very tight and firm stems. Embedded and almost overgrown by the other flowers, it sprouted beautifully and the leaves became firm and large again. The other one in the pot in front of the door didn't fare very well, although I watered it, it didn't really want to grow and since it wasn't surrounded by very many other plants, it ran out of water very quickly.
I thought I'd share this experience, it seems to be properly housed here. I remember the big potato field in our garden when I was a child. We never needed to buy any.
Bye from Germany
Thanks ERH!
I'll certainly take into consideration the message from your two Basil plants and agree that the experience is nicely housed here....welcome to it! I think that the plant (and animal) kingdoms have far greater flexibility and sensitivity that what humans have 'discovered' and documented.
This was my first attempt at growing potatoes - how nice for you to have had homegrown tatties as a child!!! I've heard that they shouldn't be grown in the same soil immediately after the previous crop so I'm planning on making a raised bed at the bottom of the back garden for next year. Means I'll be able to experiment growing greens and suchlike where the tatties grew. I like the idea of mixed beds and plan to do something like that - carrots, cabbage, beetroot, kale, lettuce kinda things.
In Portugal, where I lived in a tent for 9 months and worked the land in different communities, there was Datura growing in the potato fields. I admired from afar and this guy offered me a trippy hug :D
I hope that your further experiments with putting different plants in one bed will be successful. I have followed this on many permaculturist videos and there are quite unanimous statements about it. The best way to check general statements is to try them out for yourself. Unfortunately, I don't have the opportunity to do this myself and I am happy when I see people with a piece of land discovering this for themselves.
HaHa, thanks for the photo, really trippy :D
My memory is leaving me as far as my parents' potato field is concerned. I only know that my childhood garden was full of vegetable beds, fruit trees and berry bushes, and that my parents regularly spread an intense scent throughout the house when, for example, they put the freshly harvested cucumbers into preserving jars. The scent of dill and other fresh herbs awakens warm feelings.
One thing I know for sure that works is that you should not expose the topsoil to direct sunlight and that covering the soil not only saves water but also prevents the soil from sunburn. When I first heard it said that soil can get sunburnt, I was surprised, but immediately thought, "Of course, that makes sense!"
Greetings to you.
Of course, that makes sense! :D ......thank you and greetings in turn 🙏