I live in Michigan. I don't know if it's by chance, but my first two years of growing potatoes traditionally, in the ground, I also had to do battle with the Colorado potato beetle and its larva. They were everywhere!! Once I went to growing my potatoes in/on the dirt, but covered with two feet of compact straw, I never had a problem with Colorado potato beetles again, and it has been at least 13 years of no beetles! So, growing potatoes covered with thick straw, heavy enough to block out all sunlight, gives me.... No watering. No hilling. No weeding. No bugging!! :) PS: Over the years, I have had many potato crops that bore "potato fruit". :)
I am using the method this year, I covered my about 12" of hay. I found with all the rain we got ,that it matted the hay down to much and was preventing the sprouts to come through.. I had to pull the hay back to the side, let the sprouts grow, then tuck hay to the sides of the plants and in between. This is working out good so far.
Put down a layer of cardboard first but leave a hole where you want to place a potato. Think of it as Ruth Stout/Lasagna Gardening. I do that with tomatoes so it might work for potatoes, too. I am going to try planting some small potatoes in the compost heap/garden just to see if they will come up next Spring. Good luck!
Hi...I live in New Zealand. Love your vids and have learnt so much. This is my first year of seriously growing veges. I have planted potatoes and then covered with hay, also put some potatoes, sweet potatoes and watermelon into into a couple of small no dig beds. Everything is growing like their on steroids...lol ... I'm so looking forward to harvesting!
I'm a 57year young lady that has been forced to stop working due to bad heart.needlesd to say I grew up being taught always do a hard days honest work for your living since age of since I could walk in sure.I grew up in suburbs and always been interested in growing fruit an veggies etc etc even ducks for exterminating insects from gardens.I have to say.WHAT I NEVER LEARN WAS WHEN AN WHAT TO GROW IN CERTAIN SEASONS???????.... IVE LEARNT SO MUCH watching you guys.and I'm so thankful being as much as us know if we never had a 401k plan then ssa or ssi is not hardly enough to pay bills an buy food ..Am I right guys? Well I'm learning from yall to grown much of all that ME and my GRAMDKIDS which I raise now love to eat.Snd what a wonderful habbit to teach this new generation when there so much tech stuff this generation only seems to know.Dont get me wrong Im from 70s so I understand7 we need new all the time in techno world just to live now days.But to have what yall are teaching I TRUELY can say IS THE MOST IMPORTANT OF THEM ALL...I have not yet crowed anything due to fact it's only been 5 months now I've had pleasure of finding you on web .So I believe One must listen an learn before jumping out an either BEING disappointed or wasting time an money .So I sat back an watched yall.I live in Central TX which is 40 minutes from Austin hour from Waco TX in litterly on FT HOODS BACK YARD WHICH IS KILLEEN TX WERE WE LAY OUR HOME ROOTS.GUYS ANYBODY SPECIALLY THE PRODUCERS of this video CAN I PLEASE ASK YALLS HELP .On knowgledge of when can I grow potatoes ? When can I grow carrots ???? When can I grow tomatoes??? When can I grow cucumber??? Please please help my grandkids And I with this we are all rt here as I'm writting to you now .We are all 5 so excited for you or anybody reading our post to please help us learn more on when. To grow as well as how to grow them any SPECIAL soil for any of the veggies. I asked yall about?? And also what fruits can we grow in my neck of woods??? I know I'm asking alit guys .But TRUELY if you help teach a person to fish then your helping many teach others to fish if you get what I mean.So can any of yall feeling like adopting a old lady an her oh so eager grandkids to help us be self sufficient an feed ourselves so that one day we will be able to help teach others as well.PLEASE??????
My parents are over 70 years old but still like to farm. This meyhod is brilliant because they get to do minimum work for good yield. I can't wait until I let them know.
I am a great Ruth Stout-gardener myself. I live in Sweden and I am doing similuar things that you do. But from what I have noticed is that doing the no-dig-method works really well were the soil isn’t that much to brag about but in more fertile areas it tends to still get overgrown by weeds.
fwiw, there was an interesting paper put out by university michigan about experiments in UP where soil is sometimes non-existent. some farmer figured out (and university did controlled study to confirm) that growing barley - twice - would produce usable soil. something about barley, I guess. (season in UP is /really/ short, and barley fixes nitrogen. don't know the chemistry beyond "nitrogen-fixing" but I do know you can't really grow crops up there ... so creating soil is needed. and the barley boost seemed an interesting idea.)
My father was from Holland and as kid in the 50's helped my father plant and harvest potatoes and he sold them for $8.00 a hundred..As for myself ..started growing potatoes about 11 years ago when i retired..and have grew several bunker crops by tilling and using 8-8-8 and putting dirt back to stalks..In 2014 got married to this sweet lady that loved gardening and had used the Ruth Stout method in 80's and 90's...So we had this 100' x 200' chicken yard and i had read the best place for a garden was in the middle of chicken yard ..so we put a Ruth Stout 30' x 30' garden in the middle chicken yard ...tilled and fertilize then put hay down and was the very best garden we ever had...will try to post picture of what one plant produced..
Next year there is a very good chance you'll get more and bigger potatoes from your old plot, because the soil has become that much more enriched. Wonderful to see the growth and progress this year! Fantastic method!
This is OUTSTANDING! I have so many leaves falling every fall and i always rake them, bag them and get rid of them, I been rteading since watching your video how VALUABLE leaves actually are for gardening with veggies as well as proving to better your lawn and landscape ridding it of dandelions!! Thank you!
This makes sense. Everything I've seen about growing potatoes shows you don't need to bury them deep. After researching (including your videos) I decided to grow potato towers since I have limited horizontal space on my .11 acre city lot. Great videos! Thanks for making them.
I've done the same with a few small differences. I used store bought potatoes from my country (legal here if for own use), I laid the potatoes directly on the ground in a doubble row along with a small handfull of composted old sheep bedding (for biology, not nutrients), I burried them in a foot or so of spoiled hay rinsed out of our sheeps throughs during winter. And I never added any material afterwards. Yeild was simmilar to yours, but my potatos where a bit cleaner, and I could roll off the remaining straw like a continous mat. Potatoes where spottless despite all traditional potato harvests on this property has resulted in quite a bit of potatoes with scab and rot.
You are so wonderful for sharing the data from your experiments and for making those days fun and memorable with narratives and silliness. I can't wait to learn from your future experiments that you mention. I thank you from the heart of the farm of my dreams: the soul of the soil.
A very Pro presentation. So much spoiled Hay to be had !!!!!! I am envious as here in Israel a non-spoiled Bale costs around $30 [backdrops for Weddings and such have shot prices up] and spoiled Hay is not so easy to get one's hands on.
Hey guys, thanks for posting your results. I'm always really glad to see a new video from ye! We did a semi-Ruth Stout potato crop last year (we tilled first and planted in the soil, then used hay to "hill") , and are looking forward to doing the full Stout approach this year, and comparing results. Hope you have a good rest of the winter.
Russets are indeterminates and they do really well because they will produce more as you add more layers of hay to the stalks. The other varieties if they are determinates will only produce a certain height stalk and only produce in that layer. Manure added in the off season will help but try using Alfalfa hay it will add an average Npk of 3-3-3 to the soil. Cutting them also helps as you said, good video guys.
Thank you for these "results" video. They are VERY informative and really provide tangible evidence of methods that most of the time you only get to see the implementation, not the results.
We've missed y'all soo much!!! It was great to see your wonderful results! You do a great job of teaching and illustrating the lessons. We are doing a similar thing here in Georgia. We've spread wood chips far and wide and are looking to plant in our improved soil this Spring. Looking forward to more from y'all!!!
I have the same t shirt! It's one of my favourites. Thanks for this series. Extremely interesting but when I finally have some land, I think I'll let it sit for a year first, and plant the second. Or I'll break down and till it the first year, then switch.
And did you do a video after you set up your grow room and what the plants looked like and where you put them and how they produced???? Been looking can t find any. I need to see lol
Potatoes come in two basic varieties, determinate and indeterminate. Only the indeterminate varieties will branch out and form more tubers if the surface is mounded over the plant as it grows.
Potato fruit is common here. I guess we have just the right climate for it. Hilling them (more precisely adding mulch) several times during the growing season sounds like a good Idea. I will do that next year too.
Hilling is done to prevent greening,not necessarily will it produce more potatoes.Potatoes have two varieties indeterminate (long season), hilling will help this type as they are usually over 90 days.The determinate(short season) is 65-80 days and don't really have time to produce the extra tubers.Short in spring for early crop and long later for winter storage.This was passed down to me from my Grandparents thru a family of farmers.I've noticed alot of seed potatoes are not labeled indeterminate or determinate so you have to pay attention to days to maturity.
You are correct. Hilling is done to decrease the greening of potatoes, but can help to increase yield by acting as a temperature control. If temperature increases beyond a certain point it will lead to a reduction in the potato yield. This is why when when you plant potatoes too late, in high temperatures the yield will be very poor. Potato is a cool weather growing plant, however is intolerant of frost and does poorly in high heat. Always remember these principles when growing it
Thanks for the update, I was wondering how many potatoes you ended up with! How exciting that this method worked so well; Ruth clearly knew what she was talking about.
I cannot wait to try this next year! I wish I had found your videos earlier! I stumbled across your videos from a search for how to best plant potatoes.
We have a lot of grass clippings and when we had a raised bed, the clippings composted quickly, as in every week it was ready for more clippings the soil was rich, plants grew like crazy and there were tons of worms but when we took out the raised bed, it stopped draining, the soil underneath became slimy and stinky, anything we grow rots away and the pile just gets higher every week! Oh, the soil here is a hard dense clay so we get zero drainage after it rains!
It's a lovely idea. It would help if you would indicate your annual rainfall, because in California during the drought, there is no rain, no water, and you can't do this kind of gardening without significant preparation. 🙏🏽😥
@@BackToReality Great vid on this method. I've been using similar planting, but have found that using green grass clippings from mowing to keep covering the potatoes as they grow works best. Also use some epsom salts & a little compost to set the potoes in, then mulch.
According to her books, she used cottonseed meal sometimes, but not always. She claimed that when she used it on half a corn crop to see if there was any difference, she didn't notice any, and forgot which half she had spread it over anyway. But she said sometimes she just felt like doing it "just in case".
Love u guys, (lol). Just happened upon your first video this evening and hubby and I are hooked. Wishing u continued success. Thanks for all your videos,from Van living to Cabin... ☺😊☺
thank you for this. I was wondering!! Like you, I too planted "a potato"... in a corner of our small garden patch. Simply put it on the ground, covered with hay. We did make a bamboo teepee (bamboo is crazy wild around here, so easy to get) about 9' tall. That silly one potato grew up and literally covered the entire teepee with leaves and then went over into the green beans and finally we just let it run. When it was harvest time, we pulled back our hay, and from one potato gathered about 20. Most of them over a pound, many of them near the 2lb mark or more. I did a little digging, but there may even have been more that we just didn't find. And like you, we'll be planting more this coming year. But this time, we'll do a few white potatoes as well!
Some other channels have different mulches experiments from sawdust to sand. Leaf sound like the most convenient of them, but in brazil we have a water plant called aguapé which can survive on a pool of organic matter and double it's numbers weekly. It's pretty much a plage in rivers, but in a controled pond it would provide you infinite vegetable covers while growing from converting organic waste into plant mass. I would love to see a feedback
Just a little tip from Paul gouchi, mr back to eden. When you harvest your potatoes, take the biggest one and place it where you got the previous potatoes.
Taters are wonderful! i am so happy your plantings were successful and using what you learned this year will benefit the next crop. Thank you for sharing this knowledge. i just wish that this self sustaining way of life had been more prevalent in my younger years. Perhaps it was, but without the internet and access to what to me are "new ideas", all I heard about back then were birth control pills, hippies in San Francisco and LSD and the Beatles. A far cry from what you are doing and telling others about. i love your adventures and willingness to try different approaches and then tell us what is working and how it might even work better. you both are inspiring and examples to others that being willing to take a huge step into the unknown is an adventure that should not be missed.
Excellent video as always. Pretty good harvest I thought. I like that method. We do sweet potatoes, I may try that with them. Be looking forward to your next video. 👍
Love your channel. Watching the progress and experiments over a few years is wonderful. If you are looking for other deer/rabbit resistant vegetables to grow outside your fence I've had success with rhubarb.
We have never been able to grow potatoes because we have black gumbo clay dirt. Even though very rich, when it is dry it is like concrete. We are trying something different this year on a small scale but if that doesnt work we will be trying this ^^ thank you for another great video
Interesting. Finding spoiled hay can be a challenge around my parts, at least in small squares. Large rounds are easy enough but handling those are a challenge.
Tried planting in this method. With the changing weather patterns we routinely get excessive rain. It was a rotting slug haven. Very disappointing - I will try again.
How would you go about doing this method in tubs? Would you need a small compost or soil layer first then potatoes and straw or grass clippings? And do you layer potatoes in a tub or just one layer? And finally,should i water them after ive planted them and how often please?
The second or third time I grew potatoes I discovered little green tomatoes on a couple of the plants. I was dumbfounded! Google provided an explanation. Now it's fun to occasionally ask people "What's the fruit of the potato plant?" Folks always answer "You get potatoes from potato plants!" Always fun to explain the correct answer. BTW, don't ever eat those little green fruits. Could make you sick. Thanks for sharing, love your large growing area.
I love my potato growing experiments but I am stuffed for room having just 3 small raised beds and a few buckets. If I had as much room as you I would plant say 10 potatoes using the conventional method and 10 potatoes alongside them using this method. If you want self sufficiency this would give you an idea on which method is most productive. Good video, well presented. HGV Ps I grow in the UK and have an interest in what varieties of potato are grown in the US. I have taken a screenshot of the four bags shown in this video. Please can I use it in one of my future videos?
WAY COOL! Great to see the results of that experiment and just how well it turned out. Def something have to look into more. Have been mulching under the hedges and around trees here for years with the grass clippings off the lawn and man that soil is now the best. Seeing how your garden turned out is def inspiring and now cant wait for spring to get back at it! Keep up the GREAT work and making these great vids. How did your hugel bed turn out in the fall?
I live in the bottom of Ga. it get very hot, the question is how much water, on my hay, need and idea of what enough water looks like on the hay Thank You
I live in Michigan. I don't know if it's by chance, but my first two years of growing potatoes traditionally, in the ground, I also had to do battle with the Colorado potato beetle and its larva. They were everywhere!! Once I went to growing my potatoes in/on the dirt, but covered with two feet of compact straw, I never had a problem with Colorado potato beetles again, and it has been at least 13 years of no beetles!
So, growing potatoes covered with thick straw, heavy enough to block out all sunlight, gives me.... No watering. No hilling. No weeding. No bugging!! :)
PS: Over the years, I have had many potato crops that bore "potato fruit". :)
I am using the method this year, I covered my about 12" of hay. I found with all the rain we got ,that it matted the hay down to much and was preventing the sprouts to come through.. I had to pull the hay back to the side, let the sprouts grow, then tuck hay to the sides of the plants and in between. This is working out good so far.
Put down a layer of cardboard first but leave a hole where you want to place a potato. Think of it as Ruth Stout/Lasagna Gardening. I do that with tomatoes so it might work for potatoes, too. I am going to try planting some small potatoes in the compost heap/garden just to see if they will come up next Spring. Good luck!
Hi...I live in New Zealand. Love your vids and have learnt so much. This is my first year of seriously growing veges. I have planted potatoes and then covered with hay, also put some potatoes, sweet potatoes and watermelon into into a couple of small no dig beds. Everything is growing like their on steroids...lol ... I'm so looking forward to harvesting!
Really love your short videos . They are too the point and very informative! Recently found you and I’m a subscriber NOW…. Keep-um coming!
I'm a 57year young lady that has been forced to stop working due to bad heart.needlesd to say I grew up being taught always do a hard days honest work for your living since age of since I could walk in sure.I grew up in suburbs and always been interested in growing fruit an veggies etc etc even ducks for exterminating insects from gardens.I have to say.WHAT I NEVER LEARN WAS WHEN AN WHAT TO GROW IN CERTAIN SEASONS???????.... IVE LEARNT SO MUCH watching you guys.and I'm so thankful being as much as us know if we never had a 401k plan then ssa or ssi is not hardly enough to pay bills an buy food ..Am I right guys? Well I'm learning from yall to grown much of all that ME and my GRAMDKIDS which I raise now love to eat.Snd what a wonderful habbit to teach this new generation when there so much tech stuff this generation only seems to know.Dont get me wrong Im from 70s so I understand7 we need new all the time in techno world just to live now days.But to have what yall are teaching I TRUELY can say IS THE MOST IMPORTANT OF THEM ALL...I have not yet crowed anything due to fact it's only been 5 months now I've had pleasure of finding you on web .So I believe One must listen an learn before jumping out an either BEING disappointed or wasting time an money .So I sat back an watched yall.I live in Central TX which is 40 minutes from Austin hour from Waco TX in litterly on FT HOODS BACK YARD WHICH IS KILLEEN TX WERE WE LAY OUR HOME ROOTS.GUYS ANYBODY SPECIALLY THE PRODUCERS of this video CAN I PLEASE ASK YALLS HELP .On knowgledge of when can I grow potatoes ? When can I grow carrots ???? When can I grow tomatoes??? When can I grow cucumber??? Please please help my grandkids And I with this we are all rt here as I'm writting to you now .We are all 5 so excited for you or anybody reading our post to please help us learn more on when. To grow as well as how to grow them any SPECIAL soil for any of the veggies. I asked yall about?? And also what fruits can we grow in my neck of woods??? I know I'm asking alit guys .But TRUELY if you help teach a person to fish then your helping many teach others to fish if you get what I mean.So can any of yall feeling like adopting a old lady an her oh so eager grandkids to help us be self sufficient an feed ourselves so that one day we will be able to help teach others as well.PLEASE??????
My parents are over 70 years old but still like to farm. This meyhod is brilliant because they get to do minimum work for good yield. I can't wait until I let them know.
I am a great Ruth Stout-gardener myself. I live in Sweden and I am doing similuar things that you do. But from what I have noticed is that doing the no-dig-method works really well were the soil isn’t that much to brag about but in more fertile areas it tends to still get overgrown by weeds.
fwiw, there was an interesting paper put out by university michigan about experiments in UP where soil is sometimes non-existent. some farmer figured out (and university did controlled study to confirm) that growing barley - twice - would produce usable soil.
something about barley, I guess. (season in UP is /really/ short, and barley fixes nitrogen. don't know the chemistry beyond "nitrogen-fixing" but I do know you can't really grow crops up there ... so creating soil is needed. and the barley boost seemed an interesting idea.)
Love your videos. One potato, two potato, three potato, four and so on. Love it.
My father was from Holland and as kid in the 50's helped my father plant and harvest potatoes and he sold them for $8.00 a hundred..As for myself ..started growing potatoes about 11 years ago when i retired..and have grew several bunker crops by tilling and using 8-8-8 and putting dirt back to stalks..In 2014 got married to this sweet lady that loved gardening and had used the Ruth Stout method in 80's and 90's...So we had this 100' x 200' chicken yard and i had read the best place for a garden was in the middle of chicken yard ..so we put a Ruth Stout 30' x 30' garden in the middle chicken yard ...tilled and fertilize then put hay down and was the very best garden we ever had...will try to post picture of what one plant produced..
Next year there is a very good chance you'll get more and bigger potatoes from your old plot, because the soil has become that much more enriched. Wonderful to see the growth and progress this year! Fantastic method!
This is OUTSTANDING! I have so many leaves falling every fall and i always rake them, bag them and get rid of them, I been rteading since watching your video how VALUABLE leaves actually are for gardening with veggies as well as proving to better your lawn and landscape ridding it of dandelions!! Thank you!
My Life's Ventures I would love leaves!
If you live in the country, dandelions make beautiful flowers and are fully edible as well with great medicinal benefits.
This makes sense. Everything I've seen about growing potatoes shows you don't need to bury them deep. After researching (including your videos) I decided to grow potato towers since I have limited horizontal space on my .11 acre city lot. Great videos! Thanks for making them.
Oh I loved when my parents would harvest potatoes. They would plant 5 acres every year. We’d feast on new potatoes. So good!
Glad to see a new post! Your one of the most underrated you-tubers, can’t wait to see more content this spring/summer.
I've done the same with a few small differences. I used store bought potatoes from my country (legal here if for own use), I laid the potatoes directly on the ground in a doubble row along with a small handfull of composted old sheep bedding (for biology, not nutrients), I burried them in a foot or so of spoiled hay rinsed out of our sheeps throughs during winter. And I never added any material afterwards.
Yeild was simmilar to yours, but my potatos where a bit cleaner, and I could roll off the remaining straw like a continous mat. Potatoes where spottless despite all traditional potato harvests on this property has resulted in quite a bit of potatoes with scab and rot.
You are so wonderful for sharing the data from your experiments and for making those days fun and memorable with narratives and silliness. I can't wait to learn from your future experiments that you mention. I thank you from the heart of the farm of my dreams: the soul of the soil.
Thank you for this video! We just planted potatoes with this method and I can't wait till harvest time!
A very Pro presentation.
So much spoiled Hay to be had !!!!!!
I am envious as here in Israel a non-spoiled Bale costs around $30 [backdrops for Weddings and such have shot prices up] and spoiled Hay is not so easy to get one's hands on.
Hey guys, thanks for posting your results. I'm always really glad to see a new video from ye! We did a semi-Ruth Stout potato crop last year (we tilled first and planted in the soil, then used hay to "hill") , and are looking forward to doing the full Stout approach this year, and comparing results. Hope you have a good rest of the winter.
You guys are awesome. I am learning a lot. Extremely interesting.
Russets are indeterminates and they do really well because they will produce more as you add more layers of hay to the stalks. The other varieties if they are determinates will only produce a certain height stalk and only produce in that layer. Manure added in the off season will help but try using Alfalfa hay it will add an average Npk of 3-3-3 to the soil. Cutting them also helps as you said, good video guys.
you have the land to be self sufficient, been enjoying the journey so far
Thank you for these "results" video. They are VERY informative and really provide tangible evidence of methods that most of the time you only get to see the implementation, not the results.
We've missed y'all soo much!!! It was great to see your wonderful results! You do a great job of teaching and illustrating the lessons. We are doing a similar thing here in Georgia. We've spread wood chips far and wide and are looking to plant in our improved soil this Spring. Looking forward to more from y'all!!!
What an awesome video! I'm using similar methods for potatoes but I'm not using whole potatoes as seed - I've just been using the peels. It works!
I have the same t shirt! It's one of my favourites.
Thanks for this series. Extremely interesting but when I finally have some land, I think I'll let it sit for a year first, and plant the second. Or I'll break down and till it the first year, then switch.
Please give us more videos.....TONS MORE!!!!! Love your videos.
joan barber I'm with Joan, more videos! 👍
And did you do a video after you set up your grow room and what the plants looked like and where you put them and how they produced???? Been looking can t find any. I need to see lol
Potatoes come in two basic varieties, determinate and indeterminate. Only the indeterminate varieties will branch out and form more tubers if the surface is mounded over the plant as it grows.
Thank you. Another fine example of how much we can still learn from a dead woman! She was truly brilliant!!
How terrific! You answered almost all my questions in one shot! Thank you SO MUCH for making this video!
Awesome !!!! Planning my potato beds already!!!! Love your channel
Potato fruit is common here. I guess we have just the right climate for it. Hilling them (more precisely adding mulch) several times during the growing season sounds like a good Idea. I will do that next year too.
Hilling is done to prevent greening,not necessarily will it produce more potatoes.Potatoes have two varieties indeterminate (long season), hilling will help this type as they are usually over 90 days.The determinate(short season) is 65-80 days and don't really have time to produce the extra tubers.Short in spring for early crop and long later for winter storage.This was passed down to me from my Grandparents thru a family of farmers.I've noticed alot of seed potatoes are not labeled indeterminate or determinate so you have to pay attention to days to maturity.
You are correct. Hilling is done to decrease the greening of potatoes, but can help to increase yield by acting as a temperature control. If temperature increases beyond a certain point it will lead to a reduction in the potato yield.
This is why when when you plant potatoes too late, in high temperatures the yield will be very poor.
Potato is a cool weather growing plant, however is intolerant of frost and does poorly in high heat. Always remember these principles when growing it
Thank you, that helped clarify things.
HILLING? HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE HILLING?
@@paulcrocker8600 just mounting up the plant with more soil, compost or vermicompost.
Mounding
Thanks for the update, I was wondering how many potatoes you ended up with! How exciting that this method worked so well; Ruth clearly knew what she was talking about.
I cannot wait to try this next year! I wish I had found your videos earlier! I stumbled across your videos from a search for how to best plant potatoes.
We have a lot of grass clippings and when we had a raised bed, the clippings composted quickly, as in every week it was ready for more clippings the soil was rich, plants grew like crazy and there were tons of worms but when we took out the raised bed, it stopped draining, the soil underneath became slimy and stinky, anything we grow rots away and the pile just gets higher every week!
Oh, the soil here is a hard dense clay so we get zero drainage after it rains!
It's a lovely idea. It would help if you would indicate your annual rainfall, because in California during the drought, there is no rain, no water, and you can't do this kind of gardening without significant preparation. 🙏🏽😥
Very interesting video!
Delighted to watch!
Love the videos. Fun to watch you both working together. Peace.
The way this is presented is so neat! I sometimes rewatch your videos just for the enjoyment. =)
Clear , concise & to the point.Much enjoyed & appreciated. au
I'm so happy to see a post from you guys! :-D
Fantastic video, glad you're back. Hope you both had great holidays!
I absolutely LOVE that visual on the Ruth Stout Method. Thank you!
Thanks so much Theta Country!
@@BackToReality Great vid on this method. I've been using similar planting, but have found that using green grass clippings from mowing to keep covering the potatoes as they grow works best. Also use some epsom salts & a little compost to set the potoes in, then mulch.
If I remember correctly, Ruth did amend with cottonseed meal when she planted (per the documentary).
According to her books, she used cottonseed meal sometimes, but not always. She claimed that when she used it on half a corn crop to see if there was any difference, she didn't notice any, and forgot which half she had spread it over anyway. But she said sometimes she just felt like doing it "just in case".
Looking forward to see the Ruth Stout method results from this year.
YOU GUYS ARE THE BEST !
Great video, lesson and demonstration. Thank you!
Love u guys, (lol). Just happened upon your first video this evening and hubby and I are hooked. Wishing u continued success. Thanks for all your videos,from Van living to Cabin... ☺😊☺
Excellent useful video. Thank You.
thank you for this. I was wondering!! Like you, I too planted "a potato"... in a corner of our small garden patch. Simply put it on the ground, covered with hay. We did make a bamboo teepee (bamboo is crazy wild around here, so easy to get) about 9' tall. That silly one potato grew up and literally covered the entire teepee with leaves and then went over into the green beans and finally we just let it run. When it was harvest time, we pulled back our hay, and from one potato gathered about 20. Most of them over a pound, many of them near the 2lb mark or more. I did a little digging, but there may even have been more that we just didn't find. And like you, we'll be planting more this coming year. But this time, we'll do a few white potatoes as well!
Was this a sweet potato then? Because I never heard of a reg'lar spud that climbed teepees!
Ruby Gray it must have been
Some other channels have different mulches experiments from sawdust to sand. Leaf sound like the most convenient of them, but in brazil we have a water plant called aguapé which can survive on a pool of organic matter and double it's numbers weekly. It's pretty much a plage in rivers, but in a controled pond it would provide you infinite vegetable covers while growing from converting organic waste into plant mass. I would love to see a feedback
Just a little tip from Paul gouchi, mr back to eden. When you harvest your potatoes, take the biggest one and place it where you got the previous potatoes.
Yay! Glad you're back! Awesome
Removing flowers will increase yield as well.
Wow! I am so intrigued by this idea. So simple, yet totally effective - what's not to like??? Thanks for sharing!
I tried planting the potatoes in my chicken coop and it worked really well and the poo from the chickens fertelised the potatoes
Great video. Very useful information. I will try it this spring. Thanks. Ozark,MO
Love your video..I have one of Ruth stouts book. .she was an amazing gardener...
So inspiring and marvelous! Thanks! 👏👏👏👏👏
Taters are wonderful! i am so happy your plantings were successful and using what you learned this year will benefit the next crop. Thank you for sharing this knowledge. i just wish that this self sustaining way of life had been more prevalent in my younger years. Perhaps it was, but without the internet and access to what to me are "new ideas", all I heard about back then were birth control pills, hippies in San Francisco and LSD and the Beatles. A far cry from what you are doing and telling others about. i love your adventures and willingness to try different approaches and then tell us what is working and how it might even work better. you both are inspiring and examples to others that being willing to take a huge step into the unknown is an adventure that should not be missed.
Super cool...trying this
Oh my was I even so excited to so this notification!! Happy New Year looking forward to seeing this years adventures
Congrats on a successful harvest! hope i can do the same when I get started.
Excellent video as always. Pretty good harvest I thought. I like that method. We do sweet potatoes, I may try that with them. Be looking forward to your next video. 👍
Sweet potatoes grow from a slip ,,,not a potatoe,,,might want to check that out
Love your channel. Watching the progress and experiments over a few years is wonderful. If you are looking for other deer/rabbit resistant vegetables to grow outside your fence I've had success with rhubarb.
Awesome work, thanks for sharing. I wonder if this will work for sweet potatoes, don't see why not.
We have never been able to grow potatoes because we have black gumbo clay dirt. Even though very rich, when it is dry it is like concrete. We are trying something different this year on a small scale but if that doesnt work we will be trying this ^^ thank you for another great video
Interesting. Finding spoiled hay can be a challenge around my parts, at least in small squares. Large rounds are easy enough but handling those are a challenge.
Very nice! I really enjoyed this.
OH WOW!!! I'm definitely trying this in a few weeks!! THANKS!!!
I love learning with you guys!
Hey, Lola. Imagine meeting you here! I am planting potatoes. Rich
Nice to know the RSM works.
Wow that was unbelievable!
So how do you deal with mice and voles that devour any roots they can tunnel to?
Good job, thank you for your efforts. Keep up the good hard work.
Good story (again), thanks.
all so use granite dust is great for the soil and the plants if you know where to get it from
Tried planting in this method. With the changing weather patterns we routinely get excessive rain. It was a rotting slug haven. Very disappointing - I will try again.
Great video on an interesting topic...my style of gardening :).
Cool video
How would you go about doing this method in tubs? Would you need a small compost or soil layer first then potatoes and straw or grass clippings? And do you layer potatoes in a tub or just one layer? And finally,should i water them after ive planted them and how often please?
The second or third time I grew potatoes I discovered little green tomatoes on a couple of the plants. I was dumbfounded! Google provided an explanation. Now it's fun to occasionally ask people "What's the fruit of the potato plant?" Folks always answer "You get potatoes from potato plants!" Always fun to explain the correct answer. BTW, don't ever eat those little green fruits. Could make you sick. Thanks for sharing, love your large growing area.
You can plant those fruits out and get different varieties of potatoes. If you have the space and time to play with them.
I love my potato growing experiments but I am stuffed for room having just 3 small raised beds and a few buckets. If I had as much room as you I would plant say 10 potatoes using the conventional method and 10 potatoes alongside them using this method. If you want self sufficiency this would give you an idea on which method is most productive. Good video, well presented. HGV Ps I grow in the UK and have an interest in what varieties of potato are grown in the US. I have taken a screenshot of the four bags shown in this video. Please can I use it in one of my future videos?
Thanks great idea 🙂
Great video....I will be trying this also...tku
Have you ever thought of doing vertical farming with the towers were the water drips in a continuous circle 95% less water they use
Another great video!!
very good video
Thanks Mr.Stacky!
40 years ago what you are doing was called the "French Intensive Method". My older brother was doing it in the 70's.
Seed Potatoes in my area, even from Walmart have become costly thus I quarter mine and always make a good crop...
I love your videos.
Just discover your channel, excellent.
WAY COOL! Great to see the results of that experiment and just how well it turned out. Def something have to look into more. Have been mulching under the hedges and around trees here for years with the grass clippings off the lawn and man that soil is now the best. Seeing how your garden turned out is def inspiring and now cant wait for spring to get back at it! Keep up the GREAT work and making these great vids. How did your hugel bed turn out in the fall?
I love this channel. #1
That is awesome !! How much easier can it get ?
Hello, can you grow potatoes in the house during the winter, no water no digging?
I live in the bottom of Ga. it get very hot, the question is how much water, on my hay, need and idea of what enough water looks like on the hay Thank You
350 lbs of potatoes wasnt enough for 2 people I'm confused? Great video I'll definitely be doing this!
You guys are lovely