Backyard Farming Forum
Bringing food production home

Quick update on soakwells.



The second 1 is almost to the top with the others racing along not too far behind.

I didn't wait for eyes to form before I planted because I wasn't aware I had to. I'm happy with the results so far though.

Cheers
Dennis

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Self Employed Refrigeration Slave

If I had time to get my shite together I'd put some photos up.

We put the second level of tyres on ours two weeks ago and the plants are now at least waist high on me and I'm 6ft. All without waiting for shoots.

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My Websites: http://www.chillies-down-under.com
http://www.bbq-down-under.com

Like the soakwell idea though Curnow - very much - definitely the road we'll go down next year I reckon !

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My Websites: http://www.chillies-down-under.com
http://www.bbq-down-under.com

ok im fixing to plant some tires with seed taters, i have two truck loads of old hay that the goats and sheep wasted walked on pooped in ect... i have piled this up. i plan on the first tire filled with good soil then covering them as they grow with old hay and soil mix, will the hay work as good as the straw?
should i mix in some old leaves?
paul

Hay will work fine, you will just have more weeds in the form of the seeds that sprout, but you could try putting animals like rabbits, ducks or chooks over the pile and see if they will selectively eat the grass and not the potato leaves which will probably kills them as I think they are poisonous

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Why did the chicken cross the road? ... To have her motives questioned.

ok thanks simo, i grew in tires about 17 years ago.....showing so age there....lol but it was soil leaf mulch mix. i had a couple of red pontiac potatoes cut into quarters laying atop of a worm bin and they sprouted and sent off vines with drop roots every so often searching for light. i have cut them into 5cm segments and planted in rich compost filled cups, if they break surface and sprout we are on! seed potatoes are not out yet locally.
im thinking on 20 -30 trie stacks about 2-3 high sound right on the hight?

I'm off the idea of seed potatoes a bit, such a big bag, you never end up using them all, well not in my little backyard.

I've planted a few lots of just shop potatoes without any problems.

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Bringing Food Production Home

Would have thought shop potatoes would have been certified disease free when the farmer planted them.

I remember my uncle had a potato farm 30 years ago they would just cut up last years potatoes that shot and replant them

dono about the land down there...over...lol
i work the farm, wife shops the town. she says that if you don't buy taters in the singles piles and get what you like for about $2 a 1/2 kg you waste your money on a bag thats full of rotten old seeds. its the same for oinions at $1.50 1/2kg if you don't hand select and buy bagged you get screwed.
while im here reporting local us markets.....while shopping for beer the other day, i parused the veggi isle at my local "piggly wiggly" food store, town population 3000. prices per 1/2 kg or a us pound,in us dollars, county of org. broccoli $2.79 paraguy, corn on the cob 2 for $1.50 usa an mexico, sweet bell peppers hydro y,r,o, and green 3 for $2.00 mexico , okra pods $2.79 mexico, romaine lettuce $1.99 each mexico, romain cos lettuce 3 heads hydro $3.99 mexico..............see what i mean? this is why i garden its self defence.
paul

Did alright with my Nicola potatoes last year, getting a decent harvest growing them in the soil this time around as I have never done very well doing the straw or hay thing. I was left with quite a few taters from that harvest which were a bit too small or which had started to shoot several months after harvest, so managed to keep them from going rotton right through till about March and planted them to see if I could get a bit of an early crop. Got enough out of them to have made the effort worthwhile, but not fantastic.

About 6 weeks back I planted my first proper lot for this year - putting in 2kg of Bunnings purchased pontiacs. They had no shoots, but I whacked them into the dirst straight away and had the first heads popping out within a few weeks. I've gone the dirt again and the pontiac plants are looking very healthy. I planted them a bit close to each other, which is making it a bit difficult to hill the soil as they are growing, but I'm doing my best and hope I will get a reasonable harvest in a few months time. We had a couple of decent frosts this week and they weren't affected, so that is a promising sign. I've got another 2kg of pontiac' I purchased a couple of weeks back, so must get my finger out and prepare a bed for them.

It's been a few years since I've seen seed potatoes at the local produce store, but this year they have some. Eventhough they are only sebagos, the advantage is they are $2.95 a kg, which is substantially cheaper than you pay for a pack at bunnings. A couple of weeks back I bought 4kg of these sebagos and last weekend started digging over a patch for them, before doing the planting today. For this bed I have planted in furrows with the intention that as they grow I will mound the dirt up around them, using the dirt that is in the hills on either side of the furrows. It was quite a pain doing the planting in this way, but hopefully it will result in a good crop. As I was planting it became apparent I had more space in the patch I'd dug over than was needed for the 4kg. I didn't want to plant my extra 2kg of pontiacs in the same bed (in case the sebagos end up diseased - though they claim to be certified), so instead I went to the produce store again and got another 2kg of the sebago.

Current status therefore is:

2kg of pontiac up and running
6kg of sebago planted today
2kg of pontiac yet to be planted

All going well - fingers crossed - there will be no shortage of potatoes for us come October or so. As those of you who have grown your own before know, the great thing about home grown spuds, other than the fantastic taste which is not replicated by store bought spuds, is that they last for months in a dark spot in the cupboard or somewhere else that is not too hot.

Will try and remember to take a couple of pics tomorrow and then can track their progress. The new garden looks far from tidy (my hills and furrows very dodgy), but I'm game to post anyway.

sebagos are supposed to be the best spud for chipping.... but we have found a few others that are decent too. red rascal, kestrel, ruby red.
has anyone tried the new variety with the purple eyes? They are called kestrel. They are awwsome for pre-steaming then either roating or chipping. Leave the skin on if you are roasting.

Roating? I'm not familiar with that cooking method Stu. Can you expand? I hope it does not involve shorts and/or socks .

Bit disappointed in the soak well potatoes....they grew well (seemingly) but when I removed the soak wells the potatoes were only in the soil at the bottom, not throughout the depth of the soak well as I had thought. The potatoes in the soil were good, but I still had to dig around for them and the whole idea was to be able to lift the soakwells and there would be potatoes!!
Any suggestions for next year, or do they only grow in the soil anyway?
Deb and Mack

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Peasants

If you have a garden and a library you have everything you need.
Cicero

our Aquaponics thread
https://www.facebook.com/mccarthy.park
http://www.mccarthypark.com.au

Questions on hilling up the spuds:

How big do you let the plants get before doing it?

Do you cover the whole plant or leave the tips of the leaves exposed?

Thanks

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Why did the chicken cross the road? ... To have her motives questioned.

I have never had luck with hilling up or growing in a tub in regard to getting a greater yield. Like Peasants when I tried a tub all I got was potatoes at the bottom and not right through, I also though it yielded less than the ones I had growing next to it in soil mounds. This I put down to the plant trying to grow up all the time and not putting it's enery into tubers.

This year I have grown in mounds about 3m long and 300mm high. I just ush the seed potato in about 100mm and let it do it's thing. Once they are up I mulch around the stem but then that's it, nothing more.