After all the work I ’ve put into potato year after year , I still on a regular basis get a misfortunate potato harvesting .
Ah , the well - laid plan of mice and homo often go amiss …
Or , in my case , the half - bake plans of one natural selection gardener .
You saw my jumbo potato bottom in aprevious situation :
Out of all that space , I was present a paltry 39lbs of spuds . ( My complete white potato harvest , however , was roughly 100lbs , since I had white potato planted here and there in my kick upstairs bed and in adouble - hollow bed . )
Here ’s the post - harvest dead reckoning :
Here are the three reasonableness I think this bottom failed to give me an awful yield :
1. Spuds were planted too late.
As I feared , we got spuds in the ground too late and they were fight in the heating system . Even though that was the case , we still got some – and for that I ’m thankful .
2. Spuds were planted too far apart.
Yeah … I could ’ve gone a band closer with these puppy and the yield would ’ve been great . 12″ square is about the style to go on potatoes .
3. Spuds were planted on really hard ground.
I told you in my other post that this used to be a driveway leading up to the b / service department . The ground , even though it ’s sand , is viciously press . The bottoms of the trenches I dug were like sandstone . I trust the potatoes ’ root scheme would have greatly benefited from wanton ground .
According to my best surmisal , this seam should have web me about 200lbs of spuds . I ’m going to address these problem and see what go on . A much smaller double - dug bed in the same hard ground did importantly better in per - foot yield , so I have hope .
After weed , it was time to plant with a cover charge crop for the heat of summer . I chose Vigna radiata beans , since they ’re a bonce I have n’t spring up in a while – and because I really wish the way they look . Mung beans , like their cousins the snake attic and the southern pea , are tough , drought - tolerant , heat - defy niggling beau . These are the beans most unremarkably sprouted and marketed as bean sprouts in the grocery store . you’re able to buy a bag of them from your local oriental market for next to nothing – and I ’ve never had germination problem doing it that way . one-half of my beds are now planted with mung bean beans – and the other ones are planted with observational and staple crop like theFast Lady Northern Southern Pea , a variety of Native American corn from the USDA , and sweet potatoes . It ’s not that mung dome have a bang-up yield – they do n’t – but they do take some really high temperature , keep the ground covered , and fix nitrogen . That means you ’re not just growing a bean – you ’re turn your soil ’s fertility too .
And perchance … just maybe … that fertility will help me get a much cock-a-hoop batch of ‘ taters next springtime .
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