too much nitrogen. All the growth went into the leaves and stems (which is why they were so large and bushy) instead of into the tubers. I wouldn't have used blood and bone. That soil looked rich enough...
evey environment is different, therefore you gotta try everything what's possible and learn from mistakes. This experiment might work on different conditions.
It's a big pet peeve of ours to see experienced gardeners planting whole potatoes like this. Each of those seed potatoes is at least 6 plants, and when they're all planted in one spot, they're competing with one another instead of directing resources towards new potato production. Cut the potatoes so that there is one eye per chunk, allow the cut edges to dry, and then try again. Guarantee your results will be dramatically better (and you won't waste nearly as much seed).
Can you explain what you mean? I want to start growing potatoes too but don't get what you're saying. Is the 'eye' the bit where the lil root is coming out? so you chop the potato up and plant each piece?
Yes you understood correctly. Every potato has potentially 2 to 8 eyes, depending upon the size is potato. What I do is split a potato into 4 regardless the number of eyes in one piece. Let it air dry for a couple of days so that cut portion heals and make a bit hard surface to avoid fungal rottenness. Then I sow them 5 inches apart from each other and 7 rows on 42 inches bed. On both sides of beds there are water channels of 18 inches. Then after sowing cover-up the beds with organic mulching. Water every 2 weeks and add small amount of fertilizer with every water.
If you would have put them about 3 inches under the soil you would have got 30x that amount. That is what a lot of our farmers are starting to do here in Idaho.
I tried a hybrid version of this method this year. I sowed the tubers an inch maybe two below the surface a little shallower than your suggestion and mulched with 3” of arborist wood chips/leaves. Then when I hilled them up I used more wood chips and leaves. Plants have been in ground since the first week of February, are 24” or so tall, blooming and looking very healthy so fingers are crossed for a bumper crop!
@@JustinEdinborough They are going crazy lol! I planted whole spuds I hand selected that were between a golf ball and baseball in size and had 3-8 eyes each. I’ve never done the whole spud thing before but wanted to give it a try for myself since the www is full of varying results. I did add plenty of bone meal to each row and some 0-0-60 as I planted on virgin soil and my soil is Florida sand that is low or void of N-P-K for the most part. But it sure does amend up real good with wood chips, manure, and compost lol!
I've tried growing potatoes in plastic garbage bins. Slightly expensive outlay to begin with, but then you have them for life. And easy to store when not in use. I drilled holes in the bottom, and stood them up on bits of wood. Sooo easy to harvest. Just tip them over onto a tarp. Then return the soil to your compost heap.😊
We always cut the potatoes into chunks, keeping an eye with each chunk. So each chunk produced a whole potato plant with multiple potatoes. Less waste.
I ran a community garden for years. You can use mulch as an overlay once the taters started in dirt, and get a great yield, but they do need to start in dirt. I used tires to start them as the plant grows pile one tire at a time on top and fill with mulch, repeat as the plantys grows over the top tire you can go as high as 5-6 tires. the great thing is all winter long they will continue to grow just let the greenery die off, cover the tire with a tarp and you can unstack the tires one at a time and harvest that layer of potatoes or you can harvest the all at once and store in a bin filled with sand in a cool dry spot. If you do it this way, I guarantee you a good harvest all winter long as long as you put the mulch back over the tire and cover with a tarp or blanket. I got as many as 100+ potatoes from a 6 layer stack of tires. You can also do this with sweet potatoes. You can mix the varieties of as many as you want. GOOD LUCK! It's a lot easier than it sounds.
@@thebestStevenThank you for the specifics... I read a pdf about something like this, and hoped someone had a name for it so I could see if the experiment was done on UA-cam...
This is literally how I got into gardening. I threw kitchen scraps out into our tree line for years. Had a cherry tomato bush pop up one year, we had an apple tree that we didn’t even know was an apple tree starts producing apples two years ago (it’s about 15 ft tall) and last late spring I saw some new foliage in the tree line that turned out to be from some old potatoes I had thrown out! They were just sitting on top of the leaf litter/mulch and had rooted and started growing! I found it so fascinating and actually planted some potatoes and peppers and lettuce but found out our hard red clay soil just wasn’t suitable for growing edible plants. Yea we have tons of trees that pop up (mimosa, eastern redbuds, wild Cherry but I don’t know why they’re called that cause they don’t ever produce anything that looks like a cherry lol) and tons of wild blackberry bushes that I’m not cuttings down but I can’t get any produce to grow. So I made my first actual raised garden bed and am clearing briars to make a nice size open air compost area and clearing dead 15” tall evergreen trees to prep for NEXT years garden lol. Nature is awesome.
I have 2 peach trees that came up from pits and peelings thrown out for mulch under some pear trees I actually did plant. They produced nice peaches too.
Here we have wild blackberries and every year before the winter they get cut to about 1 foot from the ground tall. The following summer they are big again and produce tones of berries. Blackberries need trimming in order to produce fruit as well apple trees need trimming to stop branches from breaking and cause tree damage
@@astseesit For blackberries, trim back completely the canes that produced this year. Leave or just groom the new ones. They produce next year's berries.
Last year I used a small container, planted them about 3inches deep, as the top grew i added soil till the container was full. Considerating the size of the container and that it also only got sunlight a little less than half the day, I had a very nice harvest. Potatoes filling the whole container top to bottom and majority were quite large, yukon gold, about 15lbs worth from 6 planter potatoes in a 15"×30"×20" container. I may be moving but for a apartment experiment I consider it a success.
I did similar with a 36"x36" raised bed adding another level of boards and 6" soil per week until the planter was 48" deep. Left it another 6 weeks and harvested the crop. From that box the crop was just about 40lbs.
@ralphaelalfaro6023 I might make a video of it some day, probably on a larger scale as well, but this year I might not grow any, it was mostly part of a larger experiment to see if I could make a apartment deck garden worth it. While the potatoes, zucchini and lemon cucumber did alright considering, I was only getting sunlight till about noon and then no direct sunlight after that. I might do the same experiment again because I didn't have anyone to water my plants for a few days on a few occasions and it nearly killed my plants, for instance my lemon cucumber and zucchini were in pots less than 1gallon and dried out quickly, this time though I'll have a solar drip irrigation setup and so should have better results more consistently. Maybe I'll document it all and then see if it's worth a video at the end.
Mark, thanks for this experiment - I'll NOT be sowing potatoes this way. You are awesome in the garden, old friend. Bless you for all your efforts to bring the best methods to light.
I usually grab a warm body from local night spot,take it home and burry it, return 2 weeks later when the worms starting to do their job and plant potatoes and garlic…. Very organic.!!
Damn, I wish you’d’ve taken that experiment a step further & had half on & half under, just to be sure it wasn’t another factor influencing the results. I’ve seen side by side experiments where the extra harvest wasn’t worth the extra effort. But hey, you got into it 😁
Do you use any type of Miracle-Gro anything like that? I know you're probably all organic and everybody's gasping in the audience but it might have made a huge difference?
It's pretty predictable though. The potatoes grow from the stem, so the more stem that is buried, the more potatoes you get. That's why people bury them deep, and then even keep heaping more soil around them when they've popped up.
From what I understand, the method includes going back a few times to re-apply mulch layers as the weather flattens the previous one. (You can also add in some aged compost between layers so the nutrients soak down into the soil with each rain or watering.) I might also look back through what had previously been planted in that bed over the last 3 years, to see if there might have been any anti-companion plantings. It might have been a lack of legumes or clover fixing nitrogen into the soil in the last few years?
Ive grown them in stacked tires. As the plants grew, added soil. Pretty good crop but ididnt like the thought of offgassing from the tires, so we went back to in ground planting next year 😊😊⁰
@@nofurtherwest3474 That's called "chitting." it just means they're in the beginning stage of growth, like a seed sprouting. Potatoes are one of the easiest crops to grow, and Mark (the channel this video is from) has made a couple of videos about potatoes in the past.
@@nofurtherwest3474@nofurtherwest3474 Ehhhh, I feel there are better things to grow due to how little potatoes cost at the store, 5 pounds for about 3 bucks where I live If you want to, you can grow them in a large pot. They make a fantastic first crop for new growers. If you're going for cost-effective food crops then might go for salad greens, tomatoes, peppers, squash and herbs.
That is similar to my results here too. I have heard from a commercial grower that watering them once they start blooming for a couple weeks is the real key to success
Love the experimentation! Thanks for the transparency. It absolutely helps to know what not to do. I appreciate the wisdom passed on to the rest of us. 👍🏾
When I use this method, I mulch with alfalfa very deeply and nestle the seed potatoes so they’re about 3/4 covered. I think if you did it again with a bit less soil and a lot more mulch the yield would be higher. Fun to experiment, regardless!
I did the same thing working for Bill Mollison in Tasmania, except we (more "I" because he was pretty old then) started with field grass, covered that with cardboard (no gaps to kill off the grass), coverd that with sections of hay bales (not fluffed, just in the chunks that easily breaks away), add seed (potato/onion/garlic/artichoke/etc), another thick chunky hay covering and divided/surrounded with tree bark mulch. Blood and bone, water every few days, easy. No dig gardening and the straw and tree bark was too dry for snails and slugs (but still have some ducks) and an easy harvest. Next season, just put another different seed on top, more straw and away you go. Hopefully you missed something the season before and its a diverse crop. Digging creates bare soil, weeds need bare soil, bare soil creates weeds, weeds need digging and digging = work and more bare soil meaning more weeds. So dont dig, just add more on top
Thank you AI for putting on topics that you heard me talk about that I would be interested in. Which brings up different feelings one you shouldn't be listening but on the other hand it was pretty cool what you did
Mum taught us to keep cutting the tops off the bushes when they hit about 300mm long cutting them back to about 100mm it stops the plants from maturing and they continue to grow more and more potatos. We clipped them 3 or 4 times before letting them mature and complete the cycle.
Thank you so much for the experiments that we now won't have to do. I wish you the very best in everything you grow .. It can be a lot of work but very rewarding when we learn how nature wants us to handle her.. in each year she goes through her moods...too dry, too hot, too wet , too cold and damp...the seasons can be challenging to say the least. Love what you do... sharing your info Thank You
Forget the fert and tilling. Just use compost instead of mulch. Water only as needed (to prevent wilting) until a month before harvest. Add a sprinkle of compost if any tubers break the surface. Oh and chop up the seed! Most spuds have multiple eyes, only one needed. Follow all that and You'll put in a 1/4 and get way more out. P.S. I'm no expert, this is all from Charles Dowding. I dare you to try it and credit Charles
Planting onions as a border around the patch helps keep the rodents down but it's still not going to work perfectly basically need to bury wire fence for the voles and have a few cats for the rats
That’s why he has them on a raised bed - that looks to be at least a meter off the ground. Not sure what rodents you have in your area but the buggers here won’t be able to get up there..
@@AmazingAutisthave you tied setting up an easy feeding station for the squirrels off away from your garden? Maybe if they see the easy meal of corn (or whatever) maybe they will back off your garden. I also understand some herbs deter squirrels. Or.. go the redneck way and use coyote pee or cougar pee. You can buy it at most feed stores.
That’s what happened to us the first time we did that. As an unhealthy seven-year-old. I needed an easy system. Lol at least easier. So we put the potatoes no more than 1 inch under the dirt. We get a good yield and not much digging.
growing your own potatoes and making your own ketchup will go a long way in the apocalypse. ketchup is simple: crockpot, tomatoes, white vineagar, sugar, onion powder, other spices to your taste, strainer, and ketchup bottle. fried potatoes, french fries, hash potatoes, all taste great with some homemade ketchup and sea salt!
Potatoes need to have soil gradually built up around the stem. Its called hilling. In a raised bed, one could dig a trench, put the seed potatoes in the bottom and cover shallow. As the plants grown taller, add layers of soil to gradually fill in the trench. One could even mound more soil above the level in the bed. Potatoes form on the stem.
True but not... It depends of the type of potatoes : undetermined varieties needs hilling and will produce more. Determined varieties produces only on a single "layer" of soil, around the "seed", so hilling will not produce more. Local gardening stores don't put this information on the seeds package, you have to search by yourself wich one are determined or not, same with tomatoes... This is why not all tomatoes needs pruning, relative to the type.
@@davidaatcit’s determinate and indeterminate mate. 😂 If I had potatoes that were determined, who knows what they’d get into. They might become the next president if they decided to and were determined to put their mind to it. Actually, you know that makes sense seeing our current president. Dang determined potato up and became president of the United States. Dang in determined potatoes. lol.
@@djcbanks My bad...english is not my native language. I'm lacking gardening vocabulary...but i learn 🙃 My point was obviously about determinate/indeterminate veggies! Thanks for the jokes. Have a nice day and Keep On Growing!
Fun looking at the reviews that have been seeing your short. I do hope they look at your full videos and subscribe too later. Love your main videos man. From England 😅😅😅😅😅😊
"Looks like a crEAture" lolol I love it. It's so freaking cute and creepy. It also almost sounds like you said hayfully, instead of hopefully. Would've been very puny
My great grandmother would plant them this way in her yard. As the plant would grow up through the mulch, she would add another layer of mulch. By the end of the season, there would be potatoes down through the multiple layers of mulch.
Im actually glad tou did this, but not thrilled with the outcome. I just watched another video that included this method as an option and got curious. Since youve grow. SO MANY potatoes before, I was hoping that it had turned out well for you. Welp guess I'll just keep playing in the dirt! 😬😬 digging for potatoes yesterday turned out to be a very beautful thing. I had lost all but one of the potatoes i had from the one plant that grew well, but quickly went bad. This caused me to lose hope in getting any, but Lord be! I took a little over 20 potatoes out of the ground. Not as many as I'd hoped for, but now that i know O can grow them and should water the. So much, I definitely plan to plant more in fall. 😅😊😊
I’ve been doing this for years. Learned it from an elderly lady in Connecticut. We never chemical fertilize and use hay/wheat grass and chicken poo. Potatoes topically planted and covered work better.
My uncle used to do this. Only he dug a trench, lined it with older hay, laid the potatoes in the older bay, then covered them with fresh hay. As they grew through the new hay, he continued to put straw around the tops till they began to die back. He would harvest 3-5 times more than he planted, depending the year.
As a person who uses a no dig method in their garden I can tell you: Just put them around 4 inch deep into the ground (waay easier than digging deepier) and when they sprout out of the ground put a big amount of compost on top of them that just the top 4-5 inches look out of the ground. Do this 2 times and always mulch the heck out of them! you don't dig, you don't disturb your microbiome and good fungi inside your gardenbed and they are so easy to dig out because of only a little bit of compost and so much mulch! On top of that you have garden beds that need little to no preparation for the next crop growing there!
Near me the local veg show has a competition of how many spuds can you grow in a barrel. At the end of the season they tip over the barrel and rake out the spuds.
I'd really like to see you run this one again, but with the planted potatoes separated into pieces, so that each piece has 1 or 2 potential chutes to grow and produce from.
In East Texas (USA) we make a round bed about 18” in diameter, layer the bottom with 8” of pine needles, add the eye cuts, and layer another 8” of pine needles
I love it! I just started & I’m just so excited with my gold cherry tomatoes.. and also my other tomato varieties that haven’t flowered yet. But I can’t grow lavender for shit. That’s my biggest disappointment. After a little research, I think I’m a little heavy handed with the watering 😬.
"Would I do it again? Oh, look I'm not sure" Love the look and honesty. That is the adventures of gardening.
Never say never when it comes to experimentation. Unless humans are involved. Maybe think twice, then. 😂
Wonder what happened to his arm😮
@@SmoothBrain23 parachuting accident
Yes, that childlike honesty made it for me ❤
@@WildAuthoress Right?! 😃
In gardening it's also good to know what not to do.
too much nitrogen. All the growth went into the leaves and stems (which is why they were so large and bushy) instead of into the tubers. I wouldn't have used blood and bone. That soil looked rich enough...
that’s life
Before the Marxist food controls start
evey environment is different, therefore you gotta try everything what's possible and learn from mistakes. This experiment might work on different conditions.
As in life. 😅
It's a big pet peeve of ours to see experienced gardeners planting whole potatoes like this. Each of those seed potatoes is at least 6 plants, and when they're all planted in one spot, they're competing with one another instead of directing resources towards new potato production. Cut the potatoes so that there is one eye per chunk, allow the cut edges to dry, and then try again. Guarantee your results will be dramatically better (and you won't waste nearly as much seed).
Can you explain what you mean? I want to start growing potatoes too but don't get what you're saying. Is the 'eye' the bit where the lil root is coming out? so you chop the potato up and plant each piece?
Yes you understood correctly. Every potato has potentially 2 to 8 eyes, depending upon the size is potato. What I do is split a potato into 4 regardless the number of eyes in one piece. Let it air dry for a couple of days so that cut portion heals and make a bit hard surface to avoid fungal rottenness. Then I sow them 5 inches apart from each other and 7 rows on 42 inches bed. On both sides of beds there are water channels of 18 inches. Then after sowing cover-up the beds with organic mulching. Water every 2 weeks and add small amount of fertilizer with every water.
@@saadsiddiqui16 thanks :)
Right on
Exactly 💯
You didnt fail. You just discovered the way that it dont work, so that we can learn from you. Thanks for making our job easier.
If you would have put them about 3 inches under the soil you would have got 30x that amount. That is what a lot of our farmers are starting to do here in Idaho.
I tried a hybrid version of this method this year. I sowed the tubers an inch maybe two below the surface a little shallower than your suggestion and mulched with 3” of arborist wood chips/leaves. Then when I hilled them up I used more wood chips and leaves. Plants have been in ground since the first week of February, are 24” or so tall, blooming and looking very healthy so fingers are crossed for a bumper crop!
MAYBE if he did not lay 10 centimeter thick molch over it.. the soil needs sunlite.
@jcdesignsandboat-works8290
They will go crazy. And come harvest you will only have to go 6 or so inches. Rather than 12-18.
@@JustinEdinborough They are going crazy lol! I planted whole spuds I hand selected that were between a golf ball and baseball in size and had 3-8 eyes each. I’ve never done the whole spud thing before but wanted to give it a try for myself since the www is full of varying results. I did add plenty of bone meal to each row and some 0-0-60 as I planted on virgin soil and my soil is Florida sand that is low or void of N-P-K for the most part. But it sure does amend up real good with wood chips, manure, and compost lol!
I hill my potatoes , just like Dad taught me . Always get a massive crop , if your afraid of a little work , buy your potatoes from the store . 👍🇨🇦
That's the Ruth Stout method! An adorable old lady a long time ago decided to do as little as possible gardening and wrote books about it! 🤣
I was hoping it would work. I'm getting older too.. I try to work smarter not harder whenever I can. I'm going to look for her books. Thanks.
I've tried growing potatoes in plastic garbage bins. Slightly expensive outlay to begin with, but then you have them for life. And easy to store when not in use.
I drilled holes in the bottom, and stood them up on bits of wood.
Sooo easy to harvest.
Just tip them over onto a tarp. Then return the soil to your compost heap.😊
@@veronicaanne1359 that... is smart. I need to try this.
@@carolthomas3875if you keep hilling it up as the plants grow it yields better
We always cut the potatoes into chunks, keeping an eye with each chunk. So each chunk produced a whole potato plant with multiple potatoes. Less waste.
I ran a community garden for years. You can use mulch as an overlay once the taters started in dirt, and get a great yield, but they do need to start in dirt. I used tires to start them as the plant grows pile one tire at a time on top and fill with mulch, repeat as the plantys grows over the top tire you can go as high as 5-6 tires. the great thing is all winter long they will continue to grow just let the greenery die off, cover the tire with a tarp and you can unstack the tires one at a time and harvest that layer of potatoes or you can harvest the all at once and store in a bin filled with sand in a cool dry spot. If you do it this way, I guarantee you a good harvest all winter long as long as you put the mulch back over the tire and cover with a tarp or blanket. I got as many as 100+ potatoes from a 6 layer stack of tires. You can also do this with sweet potatoes. You can mix the varieties of as many as you want. GOOD LUCK! It's a lot easier than it sounds.
Could I use wood mulch that I had in my garden? No pesticides or chemicals were sprayed last season
That only works with indeterminate versions.
(Ones with a longer season)
I don't want to eat potatoes grown in tires
@@mamallama826 Not sure, but this method is essentially to Ruth Stout method. You can look it up on youtube.
@@thebestStevenThank you for the specifics... I read a pdf about something like this, and hoped someone had a name for it so I could see if the experiment was done on UA-cam...
Need more videos like this. Brilliant. Whole story in 1 video, no ads or like for part 2. Well done Sir, I salute you
This is literally how I got into gardening. I threw kitchen scraps out into our tree line for years. Had a cherry tomato bush pop up one year, we had an apple tree that we didn’t even know was an apple tree starts producing apples two years ago (it’s about 15 ft tall) and last late spring I saw some new foliage in the tree line that turned out to be from some old potatoes I had thrown out! They were just sitting on top of the leaf litter/mulch and had rooted and started growing! I found it so fascinating and actually planted some potatoes and peppers and lettuce but found out our hard red clay soil just wasn’t suitable for growing edible plants. Yea we have tons of trees that pop up (mimosa, eastern redbuds, wild Cherry but I don’t know why they’re called that cause they don’t ever produce anything that looks like a cherry lol) and tons of wild blackberry bushes that I’m not cuttings down but I can’t get any produce to grow.
So I made my first actual raised garden bed and am clearing briars to make a nice size open air compost area and clearing dead 15” tall evergreen trees to prep for NEXT years garden lol. Nature is awesome.
I have 2 peach trees that came up from pits and peelings thrown out for mulch under some pear trees I actually did plant. They produced nice peaches too.
Here we have wild blackberries and every year before the winter they get cut to about 1 foot from the ground tall. The following summer they are big again and produce tones of berries.
Blackberries need trimming in order to produce fruit as well apple trees need trimming to stop branches from breaking and cause tree damage
Sounds like you might be from TN
@@astseesit For blackberries, trim back completely the canes that produced this year. Leave or just groom the new ones. They produce next year's berries.
That's good and all, till the jerk's say.
You can't grow anything.
Last year I used a small container, planted them about 3inches deep, as the top grew i added soil till the container was full.
Considerating the size of the container and that it also only got sunlight a little less than half the day, I had a very nice harvest. Potatoes filling the whole container top to bottom and majority were quite large, yukon gold, about 15lbs worth from 6 planter potatoes in a 15"×30"×20" container. I may be moving but for a apartment experiment I consider it a success.
I did similar with a 36"x36" raised bed adding another level of boards and 6" soil per week until the planter was 48" deep. Left it another 6 weeks and harvested the crop. From that box the crop was just about 40lbs.
Right there with y’all waiting to see the results. I have been throwing in natural fertilizer as well. Super excited because we love potatoes ❤
Would like to see a video of this. Thanks.
@ralphaelalfaro6023 I might make a video of it some day, probably on a larger scale as well, but this year I might not grow any, it was mostly part of a larger experiment to see if I could make a apartment deck garden worth it.
While the potatoes, zucchini and lemon cucumber did alright considering, I was only getting sunlight till about noon and then no direct sunlight after that. I might do the same experiment again because I didn't have anyone to water my plants for a few days on a few occasions and it nearly killed my plants, for instance my lemon cucumber and zucchini were in pots less than 1gallon and dried out quickly, this time though I'll have a solar drip irrigation setup and so should have better results more consistently. Maybe I'll document it all and then see if it's worth a video at the end.
Sounds like it was 😊
Mark, thanks for this experiment - I'll NOT be sowing potatoes this way. You are awesome in the garden, old friend. Bless you for all your efforts to bring the best methods to light.
I usually grab a warm body from local night spot,take it home and burry it, return 2 weeks later when the worms starting to do their job and plant potatoes and garlic…. Very organic.!!
😂😂😂😂this comment needed more appreciation.
And in this sad world, it's crazy to think you might actually be telling the truth 😅
Now I know where the red beets come from ❗️
😳
I grow 200 lbs per year. I dig in my seed potatoes and cover them with 6" of local leaves and grass to keep in moisture and emit nutrients.
Thanks for the tip 👍🏽
Fresh green grass or dried grass?
@@5fjdksla Dried or fresh whatever you got...stay away from chemical grass though.
@@aaronvallejo8220 sounds good. Thanks
How many potatoes or chits do you plant to get 200# and how far apart did you plant? Tia!
Damn, I wish you’d’ve taken that experiment a step further & had half on & half under, just to be sure it wasn’t another factor influencing the results. I’ve seen side by side experiments where the extra harvest wasn’t worth the extra effort. But hey, you got into it 😁
Same!
How about: one potato underground and another one on top of the same potato?
I’m sure he has a video on it
Do you use any type of Miracle-Gro anything like that? I know you're probably all organic and everybody's gasping in the audience but it might have made a huge difference?
It's pretty predictable though. The potatoes grow from the stem, so the more stem that is buried, the more potatoes you get. That's why people bury them deep, and then even keep heaping more soil around them when they've popped up.
From what I understand, the method includes going back a few times to re-apply mulch layers as the weather flattens the previous one. (You can also add in some aged compost between layers so the nutrients soak down into the soil with each rain or watering.) I might also look back through what had previously been planted in that bed over the last 3 years, to see if there might have been any anti-companion plantings. It might have been a lack of legumes or clover fixing nitrogen into the soil in the last few years?
Ive grown them in stacked tires. As the plants grew, added soil. Pretty good crop but ididnt like the thought of offgassing from the tires, so we went back to in ground planting next year 😊😊⁰
I cut the seed in half, plant eyes up, cover with 1 inch of soil and cover with mulch. Watering as needed.
exactly!!!!
What's "eyes"?
@@ShadowsandCityLights The nubs that come off them
That's the way, I was taught.
That’s how I do on a much smaller scale ❤
Love this Aussie gardener ❤
Good experiment Mark👍
Definitely worth doing once to know results!
Appreciate you sharing this gardening is more important than most people know. If everyone did their own gardening they would be so much healthier.
Why do potatoes grow right in the bag I bought them in, does that mean they are easy to grow? It seems so
@@nofurtherwest3474 That's called "chitting." it just means they're in the beginning stage of growth, like a seed sprouting.
Potatoes are one of the easiest crops to grow, and Mark (the channel this video is from) has made a couple of videos about potatoes in the past.
@@awsomeman253 should i grow them then and not buy them in the store? Can I grow them in a pot?
Thanks, there's so much to learn in this world
@@nofurtherwest3474@nofurtherwest3474 Ehhhh, I feel there are better things to grow due to how little potatoes cost at the store, 5 pounds for about 3 bucks where I live If you want to, you can grow them in a large pot. They make a fantastic first crop for new growers.
If you're going for cost-effective food crops then might go for salad greens, tomatoes, peppers, squash and herbs.
That is similar to my results here too. I have heard from a commercial grower that watering them once they start blooming for a couple weeks is the real key to success
"looks like a creature!" Was wholesome AF
Love the experimentation! Thanks for the transparency. It absolutely helps to know what not to do. I appreciate the wisdom passed on to the rest of us. 👍🏾
I love you. Thank you for all of your hard and beautiful shared work ❤
Bless you for doing a before and after. So much gardening I've seen does one, or the other, no context but what they _say_ they did.
When I use this method, I mulch with alfalfa very deeply and nestle the seed potatoes so they’re about 3/4 covered. I think if you did it again with a bit less soil and a lot more mulch the yield would be higher. Fun to experiment, regardless!
I did the same thing working for Bill Mollison in Tasmania, except we (more "I" because he was pretty old then) started with field grass, covered that with cardboard (no gaps to kill off the grass), coverd that with sections of hay bales (not fluffed, just in the chunks that easily breaks away), add seed (potato/onion/garlic/artichoke/etc), another thick chunky hay covering and divided/surrounded with tree bark mulch. Blood and bone, water every few days, easy.
No dig gardening and the straw and tree bark was too dry for snails and slugs (but still have some ducks) and an easy harvest. Next season, just put another different seed on top, more straw and away you go. Hopefully you missed something the season before and its a diverse crop.
Digging creates bare soil, weeds need bare soil, bare soil creates weeds, weeds need digging and digging = work and more bare soil meaning more weeds. So dont dig, just add more on top
Love your channel and thank you for all the effort over the years. I’ve been absent of late but, your channels back in my daily watch.
Hahaha it seemed very hopeful in the beginning i love the transparency
You're a unit bud! That end shot.... looking good dude
Ikr those facken forearms
Reminds me of Popeyes The Sailor
Got them potato arms
The man would have been a menace on the footy field in his 20s
I had the most beautiful white rose potatoes inadvertently grow in the mulch pile. Like pearls they were.
That sigh after Snow broke that glass resonated with me so strong 😂. I felt all of your stress in thay moment.
You must be a strong dude! Ur built like a tank mate!
Popeye 😂
@@stonewallis4373looks like he’s suffered an injury to his right arm
I learn so much from experimenting - even when it turns out different than I thought. Thanks for posting this! I found it interesting 😁👍🏼
Thank you AI for putting on topics that you heard me talk about that I would be interested in. Which brings up different feelings one you shouldn't be listening but on the other hand it was pretty cool what you did
Mum taught us to keep cutting the tops off the bushes when they hit about 300mm long cutting them back to about 100mm it stops the plants from maturing and they continue to grow more and more potatos. We clipped them 3 or 4 times before letting them mature and complete the cycle.
Loved the honest review. I can see where, for some situations this could be an option.
Love your channel! Most of your Australian experiments and advice work in Florida just fine!
Love the videos I'm looking into doing the small bag grow off the ground on pallets. Can't wait to try it this year small to start.
Thank you so much for the experiments that we now won't have to do.
I wish you the very best in everything you grow ..
It can be a lot of work but very rewarding when we learn how nature wants us to handle her.. in each year she goes through her moods...too dry, too hot, too wet , too cold and damp...the seasons can be challenging to say the least.
Love what you do... sharing your info Thank You
I've seen alot of these. Thanks for showing a true version and not just content. Your truly my favorite garden content maker on UA-cam by far
Forget the fert and tilling.
Just use compost instead of mulch.
Water only as needed (to prevent wilting) until a month before harvest.
Add a sprinkle of compost if any tubers break the surface.
Oh and chop up the seed! Most spuds have multiple eyes, only one needed.
Follow all that and You'll put in a 1/4 and get way more out.
P.S. I'm no expert, this is all from Charles Dowding.
I dare you to try it and credit Charles
You can also just till, then hill with the natural dirt, and save yourself some compost purchase, or hard work making it ;)
You are a great experimentalist. Keep the faith, sir. It's amazing x
Love the honesty!
Not worth the space. Tried it twice. Plus the critters chew onnthem more because they are exposed.
Planting onions as a border around the patch helps keep the rodents down but it's still not going to work perfectly basically need to bury wire fence for the voles and have a few cats for the rats
What happens?
The damn RODENTS get 'em 😩😭
That’s why he has them on a raised bed - that looks to be at least a meter off the ground. Not sure what rodents you have in your area but the buggers here won’t be able to get up there..
@@skavenqblight my recipe isn't as high, but we have squirrels and squirrels definitely don't give a damn
@@AmazingAutisthave you tied setting up an easy feeding station for the squirrels off away from your garden? Maybe if they see the easy meal of corn (or whatever) maybe they will back off your garden.
I also understand some herbs deter squirrels.
Or.. go the redneck way and use coyote pee or cougar pee. You can buy it at most feed stores.
Thanks for the heads up ⬆️
Thanks for this experimental results.👍
That’s what happened to us the first time we did that. As an unhealthy seven-year-old. I needed an easy system. Lol at least easier. So we put the potatoes no more than 1 inch under the dirt. We get a good yield and not much digging.
Yes, I think you're right on burying slightly. Yields should be much better 👍🙂
Youre doing great for SEVEN haha
You have to keep adding mulch as the stem grows higher and higher
Thank you I just planted some like this bc I say a video of surface planting I'm gona go Burry them right now!!!
Your video is thoughtful and helpful and also illustrates the practicality of a raised bed: a real back saver.
I'm thinking the squirrels are going to go crazy for this recipe.
my cousin, stacked tyres, and cropped up to 100lb a plant
old tyres leech chemicals into the soil its not good for you.
@@Dale-TND*_if_* they leech. Look it up, see *_what leeching requires,_* don't just parrot random words.
...BTW tyres are manly natural rubber, carbon, and steel casing. Think, *_then_* comment.
@@IJayAmLegendTires haven’t been natural rubber for decades
@@IJayAmLegend no you're totally correct, keep eating your old used tyre potatoes mate, feed them to your whole family! enjoy!
You are awesome youtuber!! Thank you for finishing the whole experiment in 1 short video!! I so appreciate it 😊😊😊
Much Love from Tennessee we love your content.
growing your own potatoes and making your own ketchup will go a long way in the apocalypse. ketchup is simple: crockpot, tomatoes, white vineagar, sugar, onion powder, other spices to your taste, strainer, and ketchup bottle. fried potatoes, french fries, hash potatoes, all taste great with some homemade ketchup and sea salt!
Good idea. Yes, end times comin
Better get prepared. God bless🙌🏻👑✝️⚖🛡🌄
Bible people have been thinking that since the bronze age. Never comes to fruition, unlike potatoes. @sereneanna4040
Potatoes need to have soil gradually built up around the stem. Its called hilling. In a raised bed, one could dig a trench, put the seed potatoes in the bottom and cover shallow. As the plants grown taller, add layers of soil to gradually fill in the trench. One could even mound more soil above the level in the bed. Potatoes form on the stem.
True but not... It depends of the type of potatoes : undetermined varieties needs hilling and will produce more.
Determined varieties produces only on a single "layer" of soil, around the "seed", so hilling will not produce more.
Local gardening stores don't put this information on the seeds package, you have to search by yourself wich one are determined or not, same with tomatoes... This is why not all tomatoes needs pruning, relative to the type.
@@davidaatcit’s determinate and indeterminate mate. 😂
If I had potatoes that were determined, who knows what they’d get into. They might become the next president if they decided to and were determined to put their mind to it. Actually, you know that makes sense seeing our current president. Dang determined potato up and became president of the United States. Dang in determined potatoes. lol.
@@djcbanks My bad...english is not my native language.
I'm lacking gardening vocabulary...but i learn 🙃
My point was obviously about determinate/indeterminate veggies! Thanks for the jokes.
Have a nice day and Keep On Growing!
@@djcbanks Here in France, a potato president would be a treat! And our farmers would be happy to smash the previous one... 😱
@@djcbanks🤣🤣👍
I appreciate the honesty...tired of perfection when we all know life aint🎉
I love your experiments, your thoughts on them, and your reactions to what you find!
Lucky you. We have rodents that all bulbs not covered in sheet metal wires
I like the way he pronunces "potatoes".
This makes experimenting so excited, don't hesitate just do it, otherwise you cannot improve
. So be brave Dave
Perhaps slightly bury some? Cover with enough soil to keep light off?
The mulch already kept the light off
What? That’s what the mulch already did.
The end 😂 sometimes, we’re just not sure 😂
🌷 Thanks for your experiment. It was helpful. 😊
Love these videos! Thank u so much!
Love the closing remark 😆
I love watching your channel. Even though I am in Kentucky I do learn some neat things from you.
Excellent share! Thank you!
Squirrels: "Thanks, mate!"
You should definitely do it again, they look great!
Aww, his wee disappointed voice at the end 🥴 "ah, look I'm not sure"
Thank you for sharing this experiment so we know what happens. 😊
The “oh look I’m not sure” earned my subscription
I love this guy!! I’m glad I found you again. I shall follow you
Thank you for sharing🙌🤩
Brilliant video thanks for sharing 👍
Fun looking at the reviews that have been seeing your short.
I do hope they look at your full videos and subscribe too later.
Love your main videos man.
From England 😅😅😅😅😅😊
thank you, very informative 👍
"Looks like a crEAture" lolol I love it. It's so freaking cute and creepy.
It also almost sounds like you said hayfully, instead of hopefully. Would've been very puny
My great grandmother would plant them this way in her yard. As the plant would grow up through the mulch, she would add another layer of mulch. By the end of the season, there would be potatoes down through the multiple layers of mulch.
Im actually glad tou did this, but not thrilled with the outcome. I just watched another video that included this method as an option and got curious. Since youve grow. SO MANY potatoes before, I was hoping that it had turned out well for you.
Welp guess I'll just keep playing in the dirt! 😬😬 digging for potatoes yesterday turned out to be a very beautful thing. I had lost all but one of the potatoes i had from the one plant that grew well, but quickly went bad. This caused me to lose hope in getting any, but Lord be! I took a little over 20 potatoes out of the ground. Not as many as I'd hoped for, but now that i know O can grow them and should water the. So much, I definitely plan to plant more in fall. 😅😊😊
“Then I fertilized with blood and bone”
The Aussie said calmly
"Would I do this again? I'm not sure "
Lol he got fewer potatoes back than he planted and he's not sure.
Can we take a minute to appreciate that he dedicated 3 months of his life for our benefit
I’ve been doing this for years. Learned it from an elderly lady in Connecticut. We never chemical fertilize and use hay/wheat grass and chicken poo. Potatoes topically planted and covered work better.
My uncle used to do this. Only he dug a trench, lined it with older hay, laid the potatoes in the older bay, then covered them with fresh hay. As they grew through the new hay, he continued to put straw around the tops till they began to die back. He would harvest 3-5 times more than he planted, depending the year.
As a person who uses a no dig method in their garden I can tell you: Just put them around 4 inch deep into the ground (waay easier than digging deepier) and when they sprout out of the ground put a big amount of compost on top of them that just the top 4-5 inches look out of the ground. Do this 2 times and always mulch the heck out of them! you don't dig, you don't disturb your microbiome and good fungi inside your gardenbed and they are so easy to dig out because of only a little bit of compost and so much mulch! On top of that you have garden beds that need little to no preparation for the next crop growing there!
Thanks for the experiment.
Those forearms must be the result of some SERIOUS hard work!!
The defeat look at the end is me after a hard day's work. I love your content
Near me the local veg show has a competition of how many spuds can you grow in a barrel. At the end of the season they tip over the barrel and rake out the spuds.
I just love that garten and the climate. Lucky man😊
I'd really like to see you run this one again, but with the planted potatoes separated into pieces, so that each piece has 1 or 2 potential chutes to grow and produce from.
In East Texas (USA) we make a round bed about 18” in diameter, layer the bottom with 8” of pine needles, add the eye cuts, and layer another 8” of pine needles
I love it! I just started & I’m just so excited with my gold cherry tomatoes.. and also my other tomato varieties that haven’t flowered yet. But I can’t grow lavender for shit. That’s my biggest disappointment. After a little research, I think I’m a little heavy handed with the watering 😬.
Standing there at the end of the video looking like a sack of potatoes Lolol
The very end is literally every growers response to an experiment that kind of worked but wasn't much better than the norm.
Did he just say kreetcha?😂 how spectacular