Topic: No Dig Potatoes - When to start?

[grannyjanny]

We get ours from a local farm. The last one was £3.50.

[GRACELAND]

We get ours from a local farm. The last one was £3.50.

Some sell Barley staw as well Good for the pond  :D

[realfood]

If you want to eat the potatoes, then you are going to have to dig them out of the ground.

[pumkinlover]

Gynleg - local farm for straw

Grannyjanny- going no-dig this year

Goodlife- digging up potatoes is not like any other digging- It's just pure unadulterated pleasure!!!! ;D ;D ;D

[goodlife]

Code: [Select]

Where do you all get your straw from please?You need to look places where they sell stuff for horses and other farm animals..
Equestrian/pet suppliers or something along that line...and farms too..
Have look your local yellow pages and just make some calls...often if farmers are not able sell you a bale or two they know who could and are able to point you to another direction.. ;) Sometimes it's like doing detective work. 'Normal' petshops are not good for bulk supplies and it cost 'arm and leg' doing it that way...much, much cheaper to by straight from 'the horses mouth'.. ::) ;D

[1066]

Goodlife- digging up potatoes is not like any other digging- It's just pure unadulterated pleasure!!!! ;D ;D ;D

Particularly if you take a bunch of kids along with you, it's like a treasure hunt!  :)

[saddad]

I'm going to start some this week in my long term carrot bed (12 years) as the fly have finally got in... need to prick out all the self set Winter Savoury first though.. ( there was some of that purple weed ... verbena bonariensis but the frost killed it)...  :)

[Robert_Brenchley]

To complicate things a little - our plot is a horrible clay pit and two of the beds have dried out and cracked. I tried to dig into the surface and the fork bounced off!

These were the two that we planned to have spuds in. I've read about a method where the seed potatoes are just placed on soil and then straw applied on top -would this work in these horrible beds?  I could add an inch or so of garden compost on top of the clay to give them somewhere to root initially.

If not, I'm not quite sure what to do with these beds - they're horrible! But, we want to use no dig methods.


Steve

It should work, and you need to add loads of organic matter to soil like that, on an annual basis. I should go for it.

[Stedic]

It should work, and you need to add loads of organic matter to soil like that, on an annual basis. I should go for it.

Unfortunately we got the plot a little late for manure this year, but we're adding as much county compost as we can transport and slowly clearly our way through the compost heaps to find more.  In the autumn we'll add some good manure, or if we end up with an empty bed at some point we'll add a covering.

Thanks for all your advice

[Robert_Brenchley]

Any old thing will do as long as it's organic. Autumn leaves, for instance, don't contain much nutrient, but they do add humus, which is what you need.

[pumkinlover]

I've been looking for a long handled one. The chaps on our daughters site got them in a sale. They looked really easy to use.

Pumpkinlover, think about no dig ;D.

I invested in a long handled bulb planter and used it today- brilliant! :D :D

[tonybloke]

If you want to eat the potatoes, then you are going to have to dig them out of the ground.

erm, this thread is about no-dig spuds! ;)

[pumkinlover]

If you want to eat the potatoes, then you are going to have to dig them out of the ground.

erm, this thread is about no-dig spuds! ;)

So how else do you get them out? or do you mean if they are in straw you just firkle about to find them.
You-tube demonstration please? ;D ;D ;D
Trained tunneling rabbits? ;)

[tonybloke]

just firckle the spuds out.

[pumkinlover]

No specially trained rodents then? ???

[grannyjanny]

There's nothing to beat a good old firkle ;) ;D.

[tonybloke]

There's nothing to beat a good old firkle ;) ;D.

oh there is, two firckles!!

[Morris]

Ha ha  ;D ;D ;D