At the height of foliage, we thought it looked like we were going to get a lot of potatoes. This picture was from a couple months ago.
In a scheme to reduce the effort needed to harvest potatoes we decided to try the urban farming technique of growing them in a trashcan.
How this works (allegedly) is that you
- drill holes into the bottom of the can for drainage
- place potato eyes on a thin layer of dirt at the bottom
- as the plants grow you keep adding dirt until the can is full
- when the plants die back you dump your trashcan and collect potatoes
We got 12 potatoes. Some of the videos that showed this technique working recommended drilling holes into the sides of the trashcan as well as the bottom. We either choose not to do that or forgot about drilling them until now.... when we discovered our 12 potatoes.
The plants are pulled up and the harvest begins.
12 potatoes
The potato can dirt was placed into one of our beds on Hugel Island and immediately planted with Barley for the winter.
We'll try again in the spring after drilling a bunch of holes in the sides. If that doesn't work, we'll need to find a place to plant them the "normal" way.
General Updates:
We're working toward filling all our Island garden beds with dirt and beginning to prepare all the beds for a winter oats and barley crop. We've got a 2 day rotation on drying apples with about 20-30 apples in a batch. The solar heater is in place but we have not yet connected it's output to the house. We're looking for an outside puppy and maybe a companion kitty. Tree trimming will soon commence and we're still stirring our 1st batch of wine about every other day.
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