Another easy way of growing potatoes

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There are a lot of simple ways to grow organic potatoes. This article describes how to grow potatoes without digging soil.
This way produces delicious clean potatoes that can be incorporated into your family’s mealtimes.
For best results you should to locate your potato patch in area that receives plenty of sun. In soil that is well drained and that has not had potatoes or close relatives like tomatoes growing in it for at least three years.

Seed potatoes

Choose seed potatoes from certified virus free stocks. You can use potatoes that have sprouted from your supermarket but make sure you won’t get such good results.

How to get sprouting potato seed

A couple of weeks before you plan to plant out the tubers. Define a nice sunny location in your house (must be frost free) to let the tubers sprout. Good method is to place them in egg boxes on the window sill with the eyes uppermost. Once there is about an inch of growth the potatoes are ready to plant. Aim to plant out in mid-spring.

Preparation

The planting area is first of all covered with overlapping layers of newspaper full thickness. The newspaper can be placed directly over weeds. Onto the newspaper you lay out your tubers about 1 foot apart.

Mulching

Over the potatoes you need to place about 1 foot of mulch. This can consist of hay, straw, leaves, paper shreds and grass clippings. A mixture of these will work. As the potatoes grow they need to be covered over with more mulch. It is vital that the tubers are not allowed to be exposed to the sun as this produces a green tuber which is poisonous if eaten in quantity. You may need to water the patch if the mulch is very dry.

Harvesting

Using this method there is no need to dig up the tubers at harvest time. To begin with you might want to pull back some of the mulch and selectively pick out new potatoes. The main crop can be harvested once the top growth starts to turn yellow. To harvest drag away the mulch and the clean tubers should still be sitting on top of the newspaper layer ready to be picked up by hand. If you want to keep the tubers allow them to dry out for 24 hours in the sun then they are ready to be stored.
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Posted on May 5th, 2010 under Growing potatoes, Growing potatoes ways. Tags: Agriculture, Harvest, Mulch, Newspaper, POTATO, soil, Tuber, Water, way of growing potatoes. RSS 2.0 feed. Leave a response, or trackback.

Growing potatoes