Sunday was a busy day in the Towsey-French garden, resulting in the complete planting of our potato plot. We’ve got two rows of spuds, about eight feet long each, spaced 36″ apart. The spuds are planted about 15″ apart in each row. The Northern row features one russet and six organic Yukon Golds. The Southern row features one russet and six organic blue potatoes –which were generously shared by my friend, Chris.
As I chatted with Chris this morning, he noted that five families will be attempting to grow those little blue organic potatoes from the single two-pound bag he purchased from Seed Savers for $10 (if you’re growing spuds, make sure to check out their excellent potato planting guide). Should each family produce a harvest, that little sack of seed spuds could provide hundreds of dollars worth of organic goodness –a significant return on investment! I will no doubt be sharing any Yukon Gold successes with Chris as a thank you.
Our soil is is excellent condition and the spuds are well-sprouted –albeit planted a bit behind schedule. If we get spuds from just a fraction of the 14 seeds that we planted, we’ll have an excellent potato harvest. I’m already preparing my palette for the culinary deliciousness that awaits.
In addition to planting the spuds, Keri also relocated our cold frame and hard-planted a couple of my healthiest tomato starts (more than 12 inches tall each). She also put two scrap pallets to work as the foundation for pole beans, planting them at the edge of the garden plot next to our potatoes. She used two long metal fence posts to secure the pallets standing on the edge to act as both a vertical climbing surface and a fence. While not a beautiful solution, it utilizes two pallets that we’ve saved (one from Bear Bricks, the other from a flat of Yuba Mundo bicycle kits), putting them to work for the betterment of our family’s health.
To seal off all her hard work, Keri then laid straw down on the newly formed garden paths. She utilized a bale of straw we picked up at the pumpkin patch last October. The straw was originally intended to fill the pants and shirt of a porch-mounted scarecrow, but never quite made it. Thank goodness Keri kept it around –it makes a great path bed and will mulch nicely when we’re done with this year’s garden.
Finally, (and when I say ‘we’, I mostly mean ‘Keri’) also finished tilling our entire plot, using a shovel, hard-tooth metal rake and my favorite tool, the Garden Claw. I’m a big fan of the Claw; it enabled me to very easily blend-in the Black Forest soil conditioner to a tomato plot while breaking up less-desirable chunks of soil.
The reason the Claw works so well is that it lets you accomplish a relatively high degree of tilling without a gas-powered rototiller –all while standing. Additionally, the Claw offers much more control over where and how deeply you till. For urban gardens, I think this key benefit is essential. A gas-powered rototiller is ideal for preparing large plots –trust me, if I had a 50′ by 100′ plot, I’d rent a gas-powered rototiller to save time. As it is, we don’t have a garden plot anywhere near that large, so the finer control potential of the Garden Claw make it ideally suited to our garden.
The other key benefit is the manual workout. If 24-Hour Fitness could patent a machine that replicated the motion necessary to engage the Garden Claw, they’d have quite a win on their hands. It’s great for stretching and exercising your obliques. Seriously, it just feels good to use the Claw because you can see the action at work, while taking satisfaction in the fact that you’re accomplishing quite a lot without bending over. The manufacturer claims that the tool is also ideally suited to turning compost, which is something we haven’t tried, but may as we continue to contend with an ever-growing compost issue –but that’s fodder for a different article!
Happy gardening.
I would love an update on your potatoes. Mine didn’t fair so well this year. I tried a potato barrel.
Also, I’ve read Steve Solomon too; I’m curious about you tilling you garden, I kinda thought we weren’t supposed to do that? I’d love your thoughts! Thanks!
Thanks much for reading Carrie –and thanks for your reply! I’m working on a garden postmortem article as we speak, so you’re timing couldn’t be better. Until that piece hits, I’ll summarize:
Our potatoes did pretty well. The yield from 14 row feet was smaller than I hoped, but I’ve never grown potatoes ‘on purpose’ (volunteers supplied us in the past), so my expectations were not well-informed.
One thing that did surprise me was the size of the potatoes. All three varieties (Yukon Gold, Deep Blue, Russet) produced well-shaped and well-colored tubers –and some were as large as a restaurant-sized baker potato. Fortunately, that’s where the comparison to a baker ends as our spuds all had amazing flavor. I’m pleased with the results and will likely expand (at least double) our crop next year.
I’d love to try a barrel –and may– but I’m also going to give a tire-tree a try this year. I have four 14″ truck tires that will make a nice potato tube, so I’ll make sure to update with a new article on the tater-tires next spring when we plant.
As for tilling, our soil has a high clay percentage that makes it ill-suited for roots as-is, so we definitely wanted to till as part of the amendment process. This was also true for our carrot crops, which turned out amazing carrots (well, one row shined, the other failed –more on that later).
Whatever the case, we elected to till-in the soil amendments this year –and we did it all by hand (no machine tilling). The results have been fantastic, so if I’m not supposed to till, I’m happy to be wrong! This being said, we’re planting a crop of fall/winter favas this year so we can let the roots do the tilling for us. Nine months of rain on our soil does little to help condition the earth for spring planting.
One thing that stays in my mind is Solomon referring to a backyard garden as a ‘sink’, whereby the soil is only as good as what you put in as it eventually all drains out. So, however you keep the soil loamy enough for spuds is up to you, but in my non-professional opinion, it’s imperative to make sure you bring in the proper amendments to help balance poor soil, and then make sure your roots have a fighting chance at expansion. Fortunately, potatoes go up and out, so you can just keep piling on soil and thereby have more control –not so easy with other roots.
Keep your eyes open for my garden postmortem –and again, thanks much for reading!