Planting Potatoes

Attached you will find the first in what will hopefully become numerous video entries in regards to our gardens. My 7 year old is filming while my 3 and 5 year olds help out in the garden. Overall I would have to say for a first attempt it came out rather well. It will be fun to see our technique improve over the next few months.

There were a few things that I left out on the video that are worth mentioning. We have been feeding our potato beds for a few seasons with compost from kitchen scraps as well as rabbit and cow manure. Potatoes like well composted soil.

Rather than double up on something that I have already covered I thought that it would make more sense to provide a link from a post I wrote a few years ago in regards to the Adirondack Blue potato. http://seedtoharvest.blogspot.com/2011/08/adirondack-blue.html

The other variety that we planted this year is the Yukon Gold. This particular potato is the "gold" standard for mashed potatoes.

As mentioned in the video Wendell Berry has a very interesting piece in regards to his trip to Lima to examine the more primitive, and much more successful techniques, of the Peruvian indigenous populations potato farms. You can find his opinion on the subject in his book The Gift of Good Land, a book I will review for this blog at some point.

http://youtu.be/iINAQ-6VCUQ

Tobias Whitaker blogs for Mother Earth News and Grit Magazine. Click on the Mother Earth News logo at the bottom of the page for all of his post. You can also find him on Facebook at Seed To Harvest: Bossy Hen Homestead  https://www.facebook.com/seedtoharvestbossyhenhomestead/ which is a central location for his homesteading blogs and his homeschooling blog, A Mile In Her Shoes: Tales Of A Stay-At Home Dad found here https://amileinhershoestalesofastayathomedad.wordpress.com/