Tater Experiment

This will be the first time I have planted taters like this. Why not, last year my potatoes did not do well and I ended up having to buy some to have enough to put up. Worst case is, I will have to do the same thing this year to.

Being frustrated last year about the yield on the potato crop I set out looking for a new way to plant these things. I do not have the room to plow up 100 foot rows and just plant them like some folks so I have to come up with creative ways to square foot garden. This is what I came up with this year.



With only a few inches of soil in the bottom of one of the raised beds, I put news paper down covering the whole bottom. Of course the wind wasn't blowing until I started this. 

Next I wet the papers down to keep them in place until I could get the seed potatoes cut up and put and ready.
If you were wondering, yes that is 100% free rain water being used at 45 psi powered by the sun.

I cut as many eyes out of each potato as I could and rolled them in wood ash so they would not blacken or start to rot.

Then the potato chunks were set on top of the news paper, no digging.

This is really strange to me too. but that's how this is done. They say the roots will go do down through the paper and into the soil. This way the grass and weeds won't come up into the bed and around the plant.

Then I just covered it all with straw. No dirt, just straw.

You have to keep the straw moist to keep it from blowing away but other than that it's done.
I will add a little more straw when the plants come up and that's it.

The idea is when you need potatoes all you have to do is move back the straw and pick what you need without digging. This way the plants continue to produce for a longer period of time. Then when the tops dies off you harvest without any digging.
This one 12x4 bed has 12 plants in it. I don't know how many I could have put in it, but for now I didn't want to crowd it too much. 12 plants being harvested on and off until they are done will yield a lot of potatoes. I will know more once this gets going.

I also got the carrots in the ground this weekend and baby goats are everywhere, even in the house.

That's it for now. Baby goat pictures are to come.  

Sunday At The Stove

I told you at the beginning of the week I wanted to break down the events of last weekend so I would have something to write about.
 Being I work till dark everyday and can't get much done in the evenings besides shower, shave and eat, I have been lacking on posts. I think I made up for it this week though.

After all the little things I did on Saturday like the Bio Sand Filter and the Sawdust Log Press plus some other odds and ends, I found myself without much to do on Sunday.
The first thing I did was install a men's urinal in my shop.
Yes, that is a funnel going out the wall held on by bailing wire. 


Next, my mom calls me and tells me the local grocery has potatoes on sell for 19 cents a pound. Being I did not have that great of a potato harvest this year I jumped on the chance to put some up. So I ran up to the store and got 55 pounds of taters.

    
I began by pealing every one of them by hand. Great for the compost bins, hard on the hands.

 Okay, I picked up this 1960s slicer at a garage sell for a buck. Now, I am around heavy equipment all day that can kill you and in my shop I operate all kinds of saws that can dismember and hurt you. This little thing right here is the most dangerous thing I have ever operated. All I could think of is my fingers being taken off a quarter inch at a time.




Enough of all that so I went and grabbed my meat slicer and went to town on those potatoes.

After blanching the slices and soaking them in lemon water for a few minutes I put them on the dehydrator. 

The finished product is several jars nicely filled with a serving of potatoes I can use in all kinds of dishes. 
I think the shelf life for these is four years.








I also shredded some and vacuum sealed them up for hash browns.



No, that wasn't all the taters, I dehydrated twenty pounds, kept ten pounds to eat, made ten pounds of potato salad, and shredded fifteen pounds for hash browns.
I can tell you this, my feet were tired when it was all done.

That's all I got done on Sunday and it's all I got for now.