Potatoes planted! - Gardening

Edit: I have imported this from my The Black Thumb of Death Gardening Blog to my regular blog...  

...and the berry bushes are moved.

Again. (sigh)

If the berry bushes live, I will be very surprised. I bought them way too soon! An expensive lesson. Hopefully, it will not snow again. We left the sides open and will tie them closed at night, to be opened again in the morn to keep an air-flow going. I fed them and added some fish stuff. Boy, it stank. I hope that will give them a boost. I am winging everything. The books are not helpful for our area around here.


My friend, JG, sent me a great link for planting potatoes "the easy way". It is a video.
No Dig Potatoes (Peter Cundall)

It is a bit from an Australian gardening program. As you can see below, I followed his directions with only a few minor changes.Sawdust is now used at the lumber mill, it is hard to find now. The best out there is... pet bedding. Really. No chemicals, clean wood, and so forth. There is only one place down in Sandpoint that had hay/straw bales. Most people have large critters and grow their own or buy the huge round ones. We do not need that much. I made a much smaller bed than Mr. Cundall did. I wet down the bed some. We are about to have rain, again!, for a good week and soaking it is moot. Supposedly, I will not have to touch the bed again until it is time to dig up the potatoes. I will watch to be sure it is deep enough and no potatoes breach into the light of course. I planted red and white 'tators. Yum!

This is how the beds look with the black plastic. I still have three beds to work over, then we will fill them with soils and compost before putting wood chips to hold the plastic down. Straw or hay would work, but we found as we spread the straw today that Himself is very allergic, itchiness and sneezing to boot. After a while it may not be a problem after it gets wet and all that, but I do not want to inflict it on him. The potatoes will have to be the only spot to get the straw.

It will be raining soon. Time for coffee. Later this week, more seeds to sprout. Having a short and late planting season will be challenging.

Deb

I am a bit ecclectic. This blog is whimsical musings about my various interests and sharing things I am learning. If anything, it will be a good sleeping pill, no?

2 comments:

  1. What kind of berries? Mmmm, just wondering about the spacing. Not too close together?

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  2. The one you can see is the Josta, a currant and gooseberry cross. The other two are blueberry. The photo is an illusion. It is longer than it seems. Creative photography? I did not mean to, I was tired and trying to quickly take a photo before the next rounds of rain whapped us.

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