Our Permaculture Life: New Potato Abundance: A Sackful From a Handful in Just 10 Weeks

New Potato Abundance: A Sackful From a Handful in Just 10 Weeks

From just four plants we harvested 5 kg of new Kipfler potatoes today after 10 weeks of growing. That's 5kgs from less than 200gms of potatoes planted. I love this abundance...there are another 25 plants to harvest. We're going to get a sackful! As you can tell, Hugh is pretty impressed with his haul this afternoon.



These potatoes were grown in a new no-dig garden on an area of weedy grass that had never been cultivated before. We made this area to grow more of the bulk foods that the kids eat a lot of, but also to cultivate more of the plants that I give away a lot in workshops - rather than constantly taking out of the zone 1 garden kitchen garden.


This garden is part of our permaculture zone 3: farm zone. In this patch amongst the Potatoes we planted Yacon, QLD Arrowroot, Cassava, Brazilian Spinach, Turmeric, Galangal, Rosella, Okra, Pepino and also companion perennial herbs such as Society Garlic, Sacred Basil, Pineapple Sage. Now that the potatoes are coming out, I've plantedWatermelon - another of our kids' favourites.

Thanks to Columbian WWOOFer, Alejandro, for creating this garden in August and planting the potatoes.


Opening the soil with a garden fork, but not turning.
You can see the amount of openness that can be created just with the fork. The potatoes were so easy to dig out with my hands and I found so many worms.

Before making the garden beds, we let the chooks in for a while.

Some of the garden beds were top-dressed with compost, paper/card and mulch - others with just mulch.  As I dig up the rest of the potatoes, I'll make comparison on the quality and quantity of potatoes from each section. Will be interesting to compare.

Labels: , , ,