permaculture

["Lawrence F. London, Jr." <lfl@intrex.net>]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [SANET-MG] SANET-MG Digest - 26 May 2006 to 27 May 2006 
(#2006-171)
Date: Sun, 28 May 2006 21:36:06 +0100
From: John D'hondt <dhondt@EIRCOM.NET>
To: SANET-MG@LISTS.IFAS.UFL.EDU

Lawrence and Cynthia,

I have told the story a few times and I am sure there are several versions
in the archives. But here goes :

1) save your own seed. We have found that our own saved seed does on average
twice as well as bought in potato seed.

2) we have used nothing but organic mulches for twenty years. We had to give
up hilling since our local birds were going after worms with such vigor that
they undid our work almost as fast as we could do it. So for the last ten
years at least we grow always in the flat. I'm not sure if this is
beneficial but the following point most definitely is.

3) we grow many varieties almost randomly mixed up at planting time. And
every year we grow about 100 plants from seed which is very easy to do with
potatoes. Just save some of the green fruits that develop after flowering
and take the seeds out. Germination 100% and it keeps genetic diversity up.

4) we noticed that volunteer plants did extremely well (these are potatoes
that escaped harvesting and that sprouted in the same place they were
planted the year before) and eventually we almost gave up crop rotation.
This ties in with point 5

5) there are at least tens of thousands of different species of bacterium
and fungi in a good organic soil surely one of these must eat potato blight
fungus (Phytophtra infestans) when given half a chance? So we stopped
carting off leaves and stems after harvest even if they looked diseased. We
took the tubers and left all the rest to decompose in situ. A system that I
grandly called "soil immunisation" and blight has disappeared from our soil
completely. We harvest tubers and dry them for a day or two in the sun
before storage in a cold root cellar. These keep without any chemical
treatment until well after the next harvest.

What more can I say?
John