GardenDesk

Easy Potato Harvest!

We grew a few different kinds of potatoes this year and in different ways. Recently we harvested our red potatoes which were grown in the most interesting way. This harvest was done with just my bare hands and I didn't even get very dirty! Here is one of the plants pulled up with the tubers underneath:

 These were grown in a small cinder block raised bed. The growing medium was not dirt. It was a soil-less mix of peat moss, rice hulls and other organic material. Since this medium is so loose, you can harvest these potatoes by just reaching into to mix.

It is pretty hard to show you what I mean in words or pictures, so here's a first for GardenDesk - a video!

It really is that easy. My favorite thing about harvesting in this way is that it is easy to steal away new potatoes any time while they're growing. I didn't get a video of that earlier in the year, but below is a good simulation. Ignore that the plant has died back. This technique worked the same way while the plants were growing.

I just reached in every so often and took a new potato without harming the plant.

So if this mix is so great, why isn't my whole garden like this? First of all, it is a bit expensive. More importantly, The mix dries out quickly and is really hard to keep watered while the plants are growing.

I actually found this mix last year and thought maybe it would be good to have many beds like this. Before buying too much, I conducted a side-by-side test comparing this mix with my regular raised bed of garden soil, compost and peat. I grew one tomato plant, one pepper plant and four cucumber plants in each 4 foot square bed. Here were the results - this first picture is early in the season:

 

At harvest time, it looked like this:

 

My normal soil is on the left, the soil-less mix is on the right. Both sides yielded about the same amount of produce, but the new mix dried out too much. I think you can tell that the cucumber vines in the back were a bit smaller. So last year I was a bit disappointed with the new mix.

This year I began dismantling the cinder blocks but ended up keeping the new mix side of the bed. I planted the potatoes on a whim and now this mix has new value to me. I think I will reserve it for root crops from now on. Maybe I will move it into the greenhouse. 

These reds are oh so delicious! For only 4 feet of growing, I can't complain with the amount we got, and harvesting as shown in the video is so easy. Forget the pitch fork! What fun. 

Garbage Can Potato Harvest!

I like to try new things in the garden. Every year I find new things to grow and new methods to try. One of the "experiments" this year was trying to maximize yield by growing potatoes in a garbage can. I have been receiving many questions about the status of these potatoes. Well, we finally knocked over the can to see if it worked.

The idea is that you plant the seed potatoes down in the bottom of the can. As the plants grow, you fill more soil around them. Eventually, the can is filled to the top with soil and the plants are growing out of the top like this:

With proper nutrients and moisture, the potato plants send out new tuber growth all along the buried stems. The hope is that at harvest time, the garbage can would be filled with potatoes. You can see my first two posts about this idea here and here.

So it is finally time to harvest these garbage can potatoes. Here we go:

Wow, looks great doesn't it?

I could stop with the above pictures and say that everyone should switch to this method, but I won't. I always say that the purpose of this blog is to document happenings in my organic garden - to report what works and what doesn't.

Writing about what works is more fun, but this potato can actually didn't work very well. Here is a picture of the complete harvest:

That's not any more than I would have gotten if I had just planted these potato plants in the ground. So what happened?

First of all, I had four or five plants growing out of the can in the first picture of this post. All but one plant died in July. This is what the can looked like before I knocked it over:

All of these puny little potatoes might have come from this one plant. The bigger problem I think I had was that the plants didn't get enough water. When I try it again next year (and I will), I think I should change my soil mix. This mix was mostly compost, peat and regular garden soil. Next year I will add sand and have much bigger drainage holes at the bottom of the can. I want to be able to water more often and more thoroughly without the worry of being too wet.

What about you? Do you have any ideas about how to make this concept work? I know it can work. We have done it before on a smaller scale. My daughter had success with this last year with potatoes in her garden bed by enclosing two plants with wood and raising the soil around them. I know other gardeners who have raised potatoes like this in tires and even in garbage cans. What is the secret? If you have had success with this, please let us know. I know I've read about this on other good blogs but I don't remember where. If you have posted about this, please share the link for us. And if you haven't written about it, but have had some success with potato growing like this, please give us some tips.

I'm sorry to say that I am not an expert on this yet (obviously), but together I think we can perfect this method. It does work - but how?