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  • From: "Jill Bussiere" <jdt AT itol.com>
  • To: "Market Farming" <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] Intensive Potatoes
  • Date: Thu, 12 Jan 2006 07:53:54 -0600

Dave,
    Although I am not Phil, I have grown potatoes with a straw mulch in past years - one time by digging a trench, putting the potatoes in, and covering with straw.  The other time by digging the trench, covering with dirt, a handful of peat, a sprinkling of some other soil amendments, and then the soil.  When it was time to hill them, I covered them with lots of hay.  That worked great too.
 
    I bet the pigweed would be more easily pulled out from the mulched ground.
 
    The only drawback was that fieldmice like to build their nests, so when I dig potatoes grown this way, I usually disturb one or two mice nests.  However, once disturbed, if you leave them alone, the mama will move all the babies in a very short time.
 
                    Jill
-----Original Message-----
From: market-farming-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org [mailto:market-farming-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org]On Behalf Of david purpura
Sent: Thursday, January 12, 2006 7:36 AM
To: market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: Re: [Market-farming] Intensive Potatoes

Regards to the list.  It's apparently spring in New England!
 
Phil:  Please elaborate on your planting scheme.  Are you really claiming no hilling and digging ;-) ?  Do you lay them on the ground and mulch?  Or trench them in and mulch over?  Do you mulch right at planting time?  Are you combining mulch with plastic, or was that an alternate scheme? 
 
Without using plastic, I wonder if the potatoes would come through and the monster pigweed would not?  Between pigweed and hours of hand digging last year, I swore I wouldn't grow potatoes again, but this idea has me excited...
 
Thanks for sharing.
 
dave
 

Don't see a purpose for hilling potatoes, they are very easy to dig and pick
up when they are not buried to China. Some times we use big bales of hay or straw and just lay out on ground and unroll a big bale over the ground, run a
roller over them and wet down. You want to makes sure that you pile the straw
about 18" deep. The potatoes will grow up through the straw and picking is
really easy, they are basically on top of the ground. To uncover I use an old
hay rake and rake off the straw.


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