by Amy Swanson
Volunteers from: Hancock and First Parish
Digging Potato Furrows
Planting Potatoes
Main task of the day: Plant 3 varieties of potatoes including Red Norlands, Golden Yukon and Katahdins
Harriet volunteered to prep the seed potatoes. They look like baby potatoes with a lot of eyes. The trick is to cut the potatoes in chunks with at least 2 eyes per chunk. Since these seed potatoes were on the small size, Harriet halved most of them.
Meanwhile, others took shovels and dug out straight trenches about 8 or 10 inches deep. The dirt is piled along the side of the
trench and kept handy (more on that later.)
Planting is very easy. Just take the cut potato piece, shove it cut side down in the bottom of the trench and cover with a little dirt. Once we see little green plants (maybe in about 2 weeks?) more dirt is piled on top. This is repeated several times over the growing cycle and eventually the trenches get filled up and then become little hills as more dirt keeps being moved on top of the potato plants.
Potatoes like it cool and by keep piling dirt regularly on top during the growing cycle, we are creating the nice, cooler growing environments that they love.
Other journal observations:
· It’s good to rotate where you plant, especially root vegetables that sap a lot of nutrients out of the soil. Keeps a sharp eye for beds being moved around. This year the peas are planted where the potatoes were last year; the potatoes are planted where we had lettuce, onions and broccoli; and tomatoes will go where we had spinach and chard.
· We had more discussion about nitrogen fixing. As you may recall, the small garden tested very low in nitrogen, so dried blood and urea was added. Apparently in the old days, urine was collected and sprinkled on the gardens. One of our volunteers suggested there might be even more ways to recycle at home…or not!
· Looking for more evidence that spring has come to the garden by checking up on where seeds have been planted. But the cold weather is not helping anything but the lettuce, radishes and garlic. Peas not up yet, nor the bok choy. Spinach appearing in 2 out of our 3 rows. Asparagus not up yet either…so looking like we are more like 3 weeks behind last year.
· Durn those rabbits! They went after all the new strawberry plants. Funny, they didn’t touch the legacy bed which is immediately adjacent?!
· Found a cut worm while digging. Ugh! But apparently it was a delicacy for the chickens. I tried to take a picture of it but it was too ugly and it caused the camera to go out of focus. (Yeah, I am blaming that all on the pest, not on the operator.
· Did you know that Wilson’s estimates that they have 5 ft of loam in some of their fields?! After 30 years of gardening at 5 Harrington, Carla thinks she has about 3 ft. It takes time and care to build up good organic material.
· Barbara done good! We now have a scale that seems so right in the barn! Can’t wait to put it to use.
Our new scale