Hey guys! We've posted a follow-up video with a bunch of background information regarding our location, hardiness zone, rainfall, etc. It might be helpful to any of you who are interested in trying this method in your own garden, but are curious if it will work for you: ruclips.net/video/BrAJbE0ZTA8/видео.html
One should be smart enough to realize that condition vary across the globe. If you can't figure that out it's not the author's fault. You don't have to be a troll.
Consider adding pulverized limestone and a lot of it. Activates the nutrients in the soil to be pulled into the plant for more nutrition for you. Check out www.howtosavethefarm.com and www.growersmineral.com
Store potatoes in a box or airy bag (not plastic, etc,) in a cool, dark, reasonably dry place,such as a basement, cellar, or under the porch. Just don't eat any sprouts that might grow.
You could try rock crusher dust, if memory serves that, mixed with flour and soil buried at the roots of a tree will revive it and massively increase production. I tried in on the stump of a plum tree 10 years ago and it produced 3 buckets of plums just last year. Got the idea out of an old book called "Bread from Stones"
My grandfather was an old Irish potato farmer who swore by a technique that always worked. When the above ground, green part of the plant began to flower, he "stepped down" each plant. He simply stepped on each plant, bending and crimping off the main stalk, but not severing it. This caused the nutrients to slowly migrate from the upper part of the plant to the potatoes themselves. The number of potatoes produced by each plant stayed the same, but the potatoes themselves would increase in size between 20-50%. He said this technique had been shown to him by his grandfather in Omagh, Ireland around 1890. I've seen it with my own eyes and it never misses.
I’m going to try as well. Thank you. My grandfather and mother both grew up farming potatoes in Ireland (Roscommon) and they never taught me any of this. 😂Thank you
I imagine the ideal behind that is much like trimming tomato plants. They say pinching off the small limbs that grow near the base of larger limbs, as well as pinching off early blooms, allows the nutrients to focus on going to the main part of the plant instead of going to parts that are unnecessary. Thus it supposedly helps your tomato plant grow bigger and produce more crop.
@@Gutslinger right. The reason for that should be that the plant gets stressed and starts focussing on growing more fruit so it can reproduce before it potentially dies or gets to weak to make fruit
@@aleksitjvladica. ...Yes! Don't throw them out! They all have ability to sprout and grow. Thick peelings are best, some already sprouted old potato chunks all have the capacity to grow into great potato crops Good eating !
Wow, thank you, I always though peelings don't have enough resources to grow, I will keep that in mind, maybe I will plant by myself, I like to raise plants and fungus, also this method from the video is new to Me, it looks revolutionary.
I didn't want to bother ordering potatoes from seed companies so I just bought a couple bags of organic potatoes at the store, let them chit, and planted them in my raised veggie bed filled with mushroom compost. All I did was water a few times and waited to harvest them. I didnt' know how they'd grow so I was thrilled with the amount of harvest - I also got around 10 potatoes for each potato I planted. And, from planting in the mushroom compost, they came out almost totally clean! Delicious, fun to raise, and absolutely no work involved. A total winner for this 72 year old grandma!
This year my potatoes began to grow, so cut off those pieces, set aside and forgot them (while doing a 3 day painting project). Cooked the rest. Turned out they worked in the raised bed. Waiting to see if they are determinate or indeterminate. Note: Sweet potatoes are different as I found out the vines are edible. The bunnies ate them down to the nubs. Sigh! They are not the only ones who keep putting off installing a garden fence.
Having spent a considerable part of my life in a tropical farm, I'm constantly impressed by the courage of some people in sticking bare hands into a pile of mulch.
haha, guess it depends on your area, I do almost everything with bare hands but I live in southern europe where there are very few dangerous insects or snakes etc.
yeah, lucky buggers, I won't do it here in NSW, it's funnel web spiders, redback spiders, eastern brown snakes, red belly black snakes and massive centipedes here for me unfortunately...
There's things that don't kill, but hurt. There's things that don't kill, but will cause sickness. There's things that kill in days. There's things that kill in hours. There's things that just kill. You have snakes, big and small. Arachnids, with and without venom. Insects, urticating, venomous, or just simply strong biters. Fuck me i look INTO gloves and boots before putting them on, let alone shoving my evolutionary acquisition straight into that pile of lurking dangers
+s c - Why " grow " burritos? Just eat enough Potatoes.... Pretty soon you will look like a burrito! Best of all, it will be all " natural + organic " too! 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
Build yourself a potato clamp to store your potatoes, a bed of dry straw, pile on the potatoes, a nice cosy covering of insulating straw then cover its soil. Put a few upturned plant pots on top of the straw about every 6’ to create breathing holes through the straw and that’s it.
Wow, first video I watched in such a long time that 1) Kept me interested 2) Was not click baity 3) Wasn't filled with drama and the usual BS 4) No annoying background music 5) Extremely fun and informative! Great pacing too. Nice job guys you earned a new sub! I hope you guys hit the 100K
Wish I lived next door to you, such enthusiastic gardeners. I put my first Ruth Stout garden in ..in about 1965. As I fade into the sunset I wish I had someone to share all I have learned over the years..you are doing a really good job of informing the uninitiated....love your informative straight to the point delivery....thank you.
Marjorie, Denver CO salutes you and from me and my family "WE LOVE YOU" . Sharing your knowledge is invaluable. We care about learning and listening to our elders. They have walked the hard road so we can read the map. Thank you again.
Teach us ! You know how to take videos of kids or grandkids? Do that! Type up methods or get them to help. I'd love to learn anything you'd teach, it shouldn't be forgotten !
This is such a beautifully wholesome channel. No Clickbait titles. No Drama to get views. Just sharing what you are doing and what you are learning, and always with a smile. Thank you, I really love it.
Storing potatoes (and carrots) the old fashioned way in Scotland was to dig a pit put the potatoes in chuck some soil on top then straw. As kids it was our job to go and tunnel into them to bring some into the house for cooking. Turnip or swedes were also stored this way. Kept for months.
Neat idea! My Dad used to plant them in stacked car tires, three tall or so. Just push them over when they are ready, no digging, and pretty much rabbit proof.
You may want to look into the carcinogenic effects of tire rubber before doing that, the plastics can leach into the soil pretty easily, and you seriously don't want to eat that. It's simple enough to build a wooden frame instead, and you can actually get a larger planting area like that.
It's astounding that you can get lush, beautiful soil simply from itself laid over top and composting. It's amazing how it's free to grow food and yet they make it look like it's so hard and no one can do it when anyone can do it. I love this idea and I am likely going to do this when I build my own homestead.
I watched this video in 2019 and tired it. AMAZING potato crop that year. Last year I did it again and had even a better crop of potatoes. This year I've expanded my potato patch and I'm going to grow less corn because we eat more potatoes than corn. My wife due to health issues can no longer eat corn. We've grown a large garden each year since 1981. When we owned a farm we had a 1/2 acre garden. We've canned and froze all types of food since 1981 but this way of growing potatoes is the easiest thing I've ever done in the garden. Thank you so much for sharing this video about the Ruth Stout method of growing potatoes.
I wanted to say thank you for including hand-written closed captioning subtitles. Having to rely upon auto-generated can really suck (sometimes like a septic pump, that level of suckage). So it's wonderful to see actual comprehensible text that matches the actual audio, and/or provides additional information for readers to enjoy. Thank you!
Also wanted to say you have a wonderful voice with excellent diction, and I love the graphics you use when explaining things. (I may have said that on another video, but it bears repeating, lol.)
I live on the 3rd floor of a cramped Boston apartment building. I haven’t seen grass in weeks. Why am I watching this? Who cares! It’s very interesting!
@@heros670 hindu accent? Hindu is a religion and hindi is a language n not all indians are Hindus or hindi speaking people.....we are so diverse, we dont all have the same language or the sam colored skin or food
I can tell you from years of experience that deer will mow down potato plants like there is no tomorrow. It did take a few years before they acquired a taste for the plants, but once they did our production dropped by about 75% simply because the plants could never develop any tops for very long with out a nightly mowing by the local herd. They started with carrot and onion tops being their favorite. We had about 2.5 acres of potatoes at one point, which eventually dwindled down to one row of about 75 ft. We tried everything short of a fence only because it was cost prohibitive to fence that big of an area with 9' fence.
highly depends on where you live, digging up the ground might be more work but the plant is better protected from wind and weather in less habitable regions
The key thing you failed to talk about. Unless it wasn't that key to you. :-) The great time you get to spend with your wife while preparing, planting, harvesting these food items. My wife and i talk and laugh during these times. Most couples never get to spend this awesome time together. Thanks for the video
Michael, you hit on something important. Any couple that gets physical and not just in the bed have more GLUE binding them together. Fact. My hubby and I laugh and laugh and laugh. Not just in the garden, either!
How about expanding that time with neighbors and friends. Sharing, working together, getting to know other human beings other than our spouses more closely. Networking. Learning facts together. Power to the people, yes?
Great topic. Just like to add a couple of friendly FYI's on your potato topic. I live in southern Idaho (aka Potato Capital of the World) and was raised by a University of Idaho Ag Crop Advisor an am one myself. 1st, not everywhere is able to get by without watering so irrigation is important to spuds. 2nd, Norlands. This spud was developed to be a French fry potato and they suck as a baker. Lastly, to increase your production, you need to continue to add soil, or in your case used straw, on top throughout the season. Do that & it should help. As far as storage, put them in a potato/burlap sack. Each one should hold around 100 lbs. When my dad built our house, he built a vegetable/fruit bin our garage. It's about 4 ft long, 4 ft tall, 2 1/2 ft wide made out of plywood with a matching lid. It sits on top of a concrete floor and is insulated with board Styrofoam. Hope this helps. Guy H
Your videos are really good and useful. I SMILED WHEN i watched the graphic of your expanding garden outside the fence. My garden started 10 + years ago in a few 5 gallon buckets with tomatoes. I now have half my 1/4 acre back year planted with something or another. I call it hobby grown out of control. 😀
Fantastic! We used to grow potatoes the hard way, but yum arent the worth the pain. At 70 you know i am going to watch your next video on this permaculture method! God bless you for sharing. Blessings, linda
@@charleshelgeland5238 I the days before electrical appliances, people would just put the potatoes in 100lb burlap bags and store them in a dry, dark place like a cellar. They would sort them by size also, so that was convenient for the cook, who could pick the size needed from two different sacks.
One of the most enlightening videos I have ever watched. No bs, just a straight forward, informative video. Kudos. I look forward to retiring in the next two years and I want to start growing my own veggies when I buy my new property. This video is now in my favorites list.
You must have different kind of deer than I have. Mine LOVE potato leaves. I came across your video because I have very little soil where I live (LOTS of rock!) I also have lots of pine trees so I'm going to try planting under piles of pine needles instead of hay.
For storage: Pressure canning and freeze drying are both awesome ways of preserving a harvest. If you're unable to get a home freeze dryer, then you can simply store some of your potatoes in a root cellar and pressure can some of them. The pressure canned potatoes are best used for things like fried and mashed potatoes or potato soup (adding your milk and thickeners AFTER opening the jars, of course!). They do get very soft but they fry up beautifully and mash nicely when they're well drained, just add some milk and butter and you have a lovely mash. :)
In my 36 years of growing a garden I've never heard of canning taters and we keep 400 - 800 lbs of taters each year in a our tater shed and they keep up till June each year. I'll have to look in to that.
New friend here! Excellent video for teaching someone like me who has no experience growing anything. With the costs of everything going up, this looks like a great way to grow potatoes. Thanks for sharing!
We started a Ruth Stout garden this past spring. I never had such an easy garden. I watered once this entire season; during our two weeks of 90 plus degrees and no rain. Never had to weed and our harvest was abundant. We will definitely continue growing this way.
James Pinto: Mow your grass low (your going to dull your blade), put down some clean compost (I used rabbit manure), and make the hay or straw at least 8” deep. If you start now you will have to add more hay in spring; it breaks down pretty quickly.
Ok, so I can use sawdust or wood chip mulch to keep critters out, grow expensive purple and Japanese white sweet taters, make lots of money, and avoid arthritis from nightshade potatoes. Plus avoid cancer and diabetes with super healthy sweet potatoes.
Wow! A ten fold yield is awesome! If you cut up your seed potatoes next year remember to spread them out in a cool place for a week; they need to heal up a bit before planting otherwise they'll rot. And old-timers never washed their potato harvest; they seem to keep better with a film of soil. Godspeed
Well yes the moment they're exposed to water they think it's time to seed it again and rot can happen. And the leftover soil around the potatoes could absorb some of the moisture that could potentially hit the potatoes and cause it to rot faster
My grandparents had a small garden behind their house on sawhorses. I dont know why people dont do that more often. Waist level growing is the way to go.
Yes. The old boys up at the allottments are very cynical when I say I’m doing ‘no-dig’. They call it ‘television gardening’. We will see how it goes at the allottment show later this year.
How wonderful to see your video. I have gardened like that for 30 years or more. I am a life long follower of Ruth Stout and Scott and Helen Nearing. I have been ridiculed for years for throwing potatoes on new ground and covering them with 8 to 12 inches of mulch. A great way to break new ground, with potatoes and worms. :)
Just another Tip if you replant as you harvest and pile on the mulch to keep them from freezing you wont have to go back an plant later. However..... you can also leave the potatoes in the ground till needed by simply piling on more mulch in the fall. using a pitch fork lift the mulch to harvest as needed through out the winter and leaving one potato in the ground for each plant you harvested and mark with a stick where you leave off. this method was used in Central Texas by an old farmer. he left his root veggies in the ground and harvested as needed so he didn't have to try and store them in the winter above ground. so we had fresh carrots potatoes beets turnips when ever we needed them. Straw was used to keep the root veggies warm in the ground dormant until spring then they came up on their own and I'm now living in the Pacific Northwest and I'm doing the same thing here and it's working just as well.
Dreamylyn Moore man...those old timer farmers sure did have creative thinking...common sense,whatever,but very wise in their skills...god bless the farmers...
Yeah that could be an issue on the west side of the cascades but here on the east side in south eastern Washington we are much dryer. The only way it may work for the wet areas would be in grow boxes sheltered from some of the rain during the rainy season. one would just have to experiment to find what works best in their area. Not all of Washington is as wet nor as green as y'all are over there. Check with local nursery's some will give away or sale at very reasonable prices there big black tree pots I've got 4 of them an i compost in them and just plant right into them. you could drill lots of holes in the bottoms and sides and start 2 to 3 potatoes in the bottom and cover in straw, grass clippings, leaf mulch and then cover when it rains with clear plastic. could even over winter in a garage or shed that way and pull them out in the spring when it begins to warm up. just some idea's if you want to try growing them. I've got a couple of old sliding glass doors i got from a friend no frame just the doors. and some raised beds made from pallet wood thinking of making a couple more grow boxes and using them for lids in the winter to protect some of my winter greens like a cold frame. that might be an option for you over on the west side with all the rains. my pallet wood grow boxes are single pallets cut in half. 2 halves screwed together side by side and then one on each end. then we used weed cloths on the insides to keep the compost and soil inside. using old ceder privacy fence board screwed along the top to make nice place to set and work and to hold it all together giving it a finished look. everything was free. even the dirt inside was all composted from leaves sticks twigs we raked up in the fall, bunny manure, weeds and food scraps. Let set over winter, then even though it wasn't all composted I just put pockets with small shovel of dirt and planted tomatoes and cayenne peppers right in and let them grow. they are still covered in tomatoes so we added 2x4 posts at each end and across the top. I should have tomatoes till late November or even into December if we don't get to cold. and all I'm doing is covering them in clear plastic. we have also topped it off with more leaves now it's fall. you can use composted animal bedding from farms in your area too. i have to tell you they were the best tomatoes I've grown in years. another cool thing about it i didn't have to water as much could go days without water it stayed so moist even on 110+ degree days. my neighbors tomatoes and the ones we had in the ground wilted and looked pitiful. hope this gives you some ideas. Happy gardening :)
Just found you. Nice video, though I wanted to point 1 thing out...my family grew a LOT of spuds growing up and we always cut each seed potato into several chunks before planting. Makes your seed potatoes go further. Just make sure each chunk has an eye on it.
Recently bought 5 acres of wooden property. Building a tiny house..and this video is exactly what we plan to do with most of the surrounding ground.. Amazing harvest; and invaluable info!
You said that you were planting garlic. My parents always planted them under plants that got eaten by bugs. We have beautiful roses because they were never eaten because of the garlic around them.
To take care of mice is to go to a local sawmill and get sawdust. The sawdust will collapse when the mice try to burrow. Also you can rob the hills anytime after the plant blooms. I was doing this around 1970
@@xenafaegolden3019 Possibly too, but I feel like my cat wouldn't like the straw too much and use another piece of the garden with just clean compost or soil :). Should only really be a real concern if you're pregnant and fear toxoplasmosis I think?
I usually till the soil and just put the seed potatoes on top of the tilled soil and cover them with a layer of sawdust and then 10 to 12 inches of straw. when the mice try to tunnel the sawdust collapses
I store potatoes and green tomatoes in pizza boxes. The cardboard keeps them dry, dark and they are one layer so keep much better. I have fresh ripe tomatoes all the way into mid February. Just keep them cool and check on them about every 10 days to get the ripe ones out.
I copied this method...this year and was really surprised the potatoes grew! I only planted a few, but the best fun was pulling back the straw , feeling like a kid at Easter time and keeping my fingernails clean! Epic!!!
Very useful video thanks for sharing! Just wanted to add...I learnt from a Hutterite Man named John that if you don't have any small potatoes for growing! You can cut up a large potatoe makinG sure every piece has a potatoe "eye" on it and then dip the pieces into ash to avoid any potatoe seedlings from goinG rotten! This method worked nicely for me many years ago and I grew awesome spuds!😄🥔
I've Got The Cut Up Spuds, Though I Was Unaware About Dipping Them In Ash. Thank You For The Tips. I'm Learning More In The Comments Than In The Video. Though I Am Greatful For The Video. We Do Have A Family Of Hawks, And Two Rescued Kittens. With The Tips On Planting In Sections vs An Entire Bed, Therefore Leaving Exposure To Predators To Prevent Voles n SuchI Shall Give This A Try For My First Potatoe, Infact Gardening Experience
@@audrianaferreira Best wishes on growinG your potatoes! Ashes definately help with potatoes not goinG rotten...but there must be other thinGs that are just as effective!😄🥔
Years ago I read about and tried container gardening with potatoes. My only cost was purchasing some additives for my soil which was terribly poor for food growing. I got some free 10 gallon buckets that had been used for food storage, and my seed "stock" was peelings from potatoes purchased that year for food, so a free by product of what was going to end up mulch anyway. It was an experiment as I was not going to keep my home for more than one more year... Anyway I figure Just the peelings from about 20 pounds of assorted potatoes yielded over 40 pounds of harvest. This year I am sharing a house that stands on almost 2 acres of land. I am going to try my hand at a little gardening, mostly containers due to disability; and growing potatoes and other items that can be regrown from fruits and veggies purchased from the market (like carrots, onions, celery, etc) to stretch my very limited budget as far as I can. Ill keep records this time and see how my harvest compares to any investment I have to make to get it up and running.
Best way I have found to store potatoes is to can them! They will last literally years and taste great! But if I store them over winter with out canning I never wash them and store them in a well ventilated container in a cool dry dark area. they will last for several months. The key is don't wash them before storing.
No need for walking paths, double your yield by planting rows every 18". You're not going in to weed or anything, so there's no need for walking paths. You can harvest early from the edge.
Wow! That was a wonderful video. I had never heard of the Ruth Stout method until this video and I have been farming most of my life. I will definitely give this a try. Thank you so much.
I had flashbacks to my youth when you dragged that box of previous years potatoes out to plant. Sweet memories of youth. I’m definitely going to give this a shot if we’re all around after covid-19.
Rich okay doc. Thanks for the reassurance. Not trying to be a sa but never underestimate a virus. Otherwise you’ll be scratching your head thinking I sure didn’t see that coming.
After watching this video, I’ve been binging a lot of your content and I have to say it’s fantastic! This is a great channel with awesome narration, animation, and overall quality content. It’s really making me desire to get my own land and do what you do!
Your basically doing BTE gardening, I've been doing this for four years now I harvest and plant next seasons crop at the same time, planting in the wood chips is awesome there is no hilling at all the mushroom mycelium holds the wood chips together, yet are light enough to expand as the potatoes grow or even let's them push each other around, even over populated carrots push each other aside without any problems, awesome video thanks for sharing.
Yes cut you seeds. All you need is a couple or 3 good eyes on each chunk this will save you on the amount of seed needed or give you more to plant. My wife's grand father would sit in front of TV at night cut meaty sections out with a couple or so eyes on each and end up with a nice chunk of potato to cook out of each to cook his potatoe soup for lunch after we would plant. We alway planted a good half acre lol. To help with your potatoes and get bigger onions I'd go with a deeper bed or pull bed back like in a harvest a few days before planting run a tiller through real quick and pull back. I say that because your onions were hitting hard ground and will grow bigger with softer dirt. My onions grow large on top a nice soft tilled hill so this should give same effect. Remember white potatoes grow up and sweet grow down White you can add to you bed hight a couple times sweet need to start high. If you try sweet don't plant seed. Early before planting you plant a draw bed kinda shallow seed close together let it sprout when those growths(draws) are around a foot high you you pull off from potato seed you lay it down on and push in with all four fingers from root end make sure that section is covered and give it a shot of water to start. That gives you a good root base to start. I still dirt farm but I grow a half to full acre and I grow good sweet potatoes using draws instead of seed plus that helps your sweets not to be stringy in the flesh. When you get a real stringy sweet is because it was from seed not draws. When you start your draw harvest select pick to thin them to pull your best ones and give space for smaller to catch up. I plant a row a day and takes me a week or more to plant all depending on the amount of seed and draw bed size I started with.
Your comment is a great example of why I love coming down to the comment sections of these types of videos. Everyone's really nice and pours their brains out for what helped them and how it can help you.
Thanks, but what are Draws? You seem to know quite a bit about Sweet Tators... I’m new trying to grow slips from the Organic purple store bought Sweet tator from a 🍠Half sweet suspended from a cup of water 💦 still no sprouts 🌱or growths after a few weeks. How would this be grown different from a regular potato 🥔 please? 🙏
@@siry5164 What I call draws is what you call slips. Just a regional thing I guess. I cant say about the seed in a cup of water because iv never done it. But if your trying to grow slips/draws in the house I would get a flower pot the more you want to grow the bigger the pot or more of them. Just plant in pot and cover with a inch or so of soil and keep watered like a plant. Look up Living traditions homestead on you tube. I'm almost certain they did a video on the seed in a jar of water.. Lol I'm use to growing a lot so I do my draws in a tilled bed outside so the pots in house should work. Anyway check them out.
We used to store carrots and potatoes in sand in a wooden box in the dark basement which was a bit damp but the sand allowed the carrots and potatoes to stay dry and mold free....shake as much dirt off as possible!
Can confirm. I'm not sure where in Ontario these guys are, but I grew up in the Huntsville region. We used boxes about the size of a dresser drawer, stacked up on one another in an alternating pattern like bricks, to keep them stable. In each box, we placed a layer of dry sand about a finger deep, a layer of spuds, enough sand to cover them, and repeat the pattern until the "drawer" is full, with sand on top. They kept in the basement all winter, with no ill effect. We also sifted the sand, to get out any humus - but my dad was in construction, so this was as easy as simply turning on a machine and shovelling the sand in; I'm not sure if it was necessary, or a "just in case" measure.
@@adreabrooks11 that's great info, thank you! I'm in Ireland and things can get a bit damp here, but I'd say in our dry shed this would be an option too.
Just want to thank you for focusing on giving info. None of the tricks to make a video longer just for ad revenue. Thats an encouraging attribute that you truly need to be commended for. God bless
I just found you channel and I can't stop watching it. Congrats on the clear and pleasant presentation, nice pictures and interesting content. Just started a no-dig garden this year and I love it. Will be experimenting some more with permaculture next year. Can't wait for the next season!
You're lucky to have that snake! Around here we just don't have many slug and snail predators aside from birds and it shows! Slugs are my #1 problem in the garden, lizards like slow worms do feed on them but they're sadly rare.
From the Western red cedars in the background, I believe they are in Western Washington. I'm sure their area gets more than the 12" a year of precipitation my area receives. However the technique is valuable anywhere.
@@jdude7650 They're in Canada. Not sure what part, but it seems like it might be back eastish. I think their families are around Ontario? I could be wrong, but I know they're in the Great White North. 😊
@@jdude7650 - they're somewhere outside of Toronto-ish. The no-till + heavy heavy hay mulch is what does the drought-proofing.* * By which I certainly don't mean to imply a garden can be fully drought-proofed that way... it just does a pretty decent job.
@@carolbrandenberg9336 do you use any soil when you plant tomatoes into a straw bale? i just created my first straw bale-ish bed this season and was wondering how to safe proof the young seedlings until they establish root.
That's it, I'm planting a garden this year! Never have time normally. This quarantine does have some perks. I'm getting the family in the yard this year. I have tons of extra cocoa from the marijuana I grow indoors, this will work perfectly for onions & potatoes I think. A mix of experiments & farming. Hope it works
I did this with store bought potatoes that I let go to seed. OMG the taters are very clean when you harvest them, and I've gotten so many, and I've only just begun to harvest them. I did reds, purples and white potatoes. We will definently have mo plenty of taters to eat this year.
I’m am very very interested in how you figure out how to store your produce. I planted potatoes one year and got a beautiful harvest but lost them all to bugs after harvesting. I was so discouraged. My neighbor said to leave them out to dry for a couple of days but flies got into them...
Well method we use is store them in cold basement in layers of clean sand, same can be done for carrots and other root vegetables, they will last that way up to 6 months (unless you eat them sooner :)) They will start to grow sprouts near end of storage time rather than spoil this way :) For onions we make big wreaths out of them and let them dry hanged under roof outside before moving them into basement.
Sprinkle dehydrated lime powder (pickling lime) on them and store in a cool dark place like under a house or shed. That's how the old people use to do it.
You can also use wood chips , I have used 4 layers of newspaper 4 inches of cow manure and about five or six inches of wood chips and that works absolutely awesome
Thanks for sharing. My husband chops a lot of wood. We have a firewood business. One question though. How often would you water it or is it good to allow the rain to water it.
@@bossforever1865 well it depends usually you don't have to water it much especially in the spring and fall, the wood chips really do awesome job at retaining the moisture so we have a gravity fed watering system on a timer in the summer and it's usually set for an hour a day and we set it on driplets, we use the black hose with the adjustable nipples
@@colethomas2207 That sounds like a really nice set up. So, if you do that, I think I will try and save rainwater and get some water from the river to water it. That may be a lot of work, but I am trying not to use treated water. Maybe on a hot summer day I will break out the hose. Once they start sprouting, do you recover with mulch or hay?
Container gardens for other vegs can be surprisingly productive. In fact, there are quite a few RUclips vids about growing potatoes in 5 gallon buckets! A patio or balcony can be a great place to start.
As a potato farmer I can put an end to your potato cutting theroy. The smaller the potato seed (or Tuber as they are commonly known) the closer you can plant them. This is mainly due to the amount of eyelets on the potato and the potential energy stored within the potato.
@@teamAmerica101 No joke i kept mine in un heated basement in dark corner they would last till April. If they get sprouts just break them off and use. Just dont put them in a refrigerator they get sweet and don't taste good. I done that one year to trying to get them to last longer
You asked how to store potatoes. Dig a hole at least 4 feet deep. Throw the potatoes in it and cover with earth. In spring dig up your potatoes. This method was used in Ontario in the early 1900s.
In North Idaho, U.S., centipedes would lay eggs in potatoes left in my garden too long. The potatoes would be riddled with disgusting little curled-up centipedes. There was no practical way to get them out without making the spuds spoil faster. I discovered that there would be almost no centipedes if I did NOT add compost to the potato beds, and instead, fertilized with fresh manure tea, diluted.
That's is so cool. Great harvest. So many varieties. Love how you work together to make it happen. Proud of your efforts. As a kid, we had a cold bin in the cellar where potatoes were stored, and rows of mason jars full of things mom put up. It was great fun to harvest the vegetables. I have a small garden just for the heck of it now, and it puts out enough for the summer. I sure look forward to your videos. Thanks for sharing them with us. 😊👍👍
You can store them in a cool dry place for several months. Personally I like to wash them, slice them thinly on the mandolin and dry the slices. I store them in jars and can prepare them in two ways. 1- Grind them up in the food processor and use them like potato flakes, and 2 - layer them in a pan with milk, cheese, butter and herbs for potato au gratin. Both ways are delicious and the dried slices will keep for years in a cool dry place.
Most any kind of fruit can be sliced and dried. Also meats can be salted and dried. As long as you store it in a cool dry place it can keep for years. I've heard of dehydrated apple slices keeping for 10 years and still tasting great, and I've personally had venison jerky that was 4 years old and tasted like brand new. It's not really the same, but when I harvest tomatoes, I remove the skins and can the tomato sauce. I save the skins and dehydrate them. When they are totally bone dry I grind them in a spice grinder to make powder. The powder can be mixed with water to make tomato paste or tomato sauce - depending on how thick you mix it. Also can be used like a seasoning to give a tomato flavor.
@insuk barton depending on where you are you may be able to regrow supermarket bought Ginger. If not just go to a like your nearest gardening store which may sell seeds and such.
Tell me, this wasn't divine Intervention!! I was just listening to a song, the song was saying " Back to life, back to reality, to the here and now" I hit subscribed.. Then watched your video. I'm about to have a Back to Reality day, me and my garden journal.. Thank you for sharing.
That's an old song ya got there friend. I used to date a DJ back when that song was in. That was so long ago I wasnt even drinking age, shhhhh. I'm 51 now!
Planted potatoes few years back and one evening just as it was getting dark I watched the deer making supper of the potatoes leaves, they don’t eat the stems but everyone of my potato leaves were gone, I sure hope they enjoyed them! Oh to live in the National Forest
This is some awesome info, tips! Thank you! Unfortunately I don't have the time or the space to create something as big. I'm going to attempt this with hay this fall in a much smaller 4x4 space. I have a family of 6 to feed, I think that will be plenty as long as we're patient enough to let it develop instead of continually harvesting the first year. But I think, if I can get it to work, the following year we can harvest as we want to eat something that includes tatters.
Me too! Today I'm making smashed potatoes. Boil smallish potatoes. Smash with the heal of your hand and squeeze (using a garlic press) some garlic over it all, (and any other herb etc) on a baking sheet, bake till a little crispy on the edges. Yum!
+ken j - Hmmmm, you've found the word *" Lazy "* , but you didn't find the word *" Logic "* ??? I think you better look into the dictionary again and find " Logic " and then tell me what you think??? 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
You guys are my model for what I want to do later with my life. I want to live on a nice hill, a lot above sea level, away from the cities. Near a river for fresh water. I want to have a huge variety of crops, herbs and maybe some animals. I want to save al lot of money by growing everything but stuff like bread ingredients, and I'll have money left over for high quality meat from healthy animals that didn't spend their whole life in a cage. It will be awesome.
I guess there are no ground squirrels where you guys are living. Lucky you. I had a plot cleared off near a wheat field, planted a small potato crop and they ate every one. They have riddled the area with holes, and it will be impossible to grow anything until they are gone., and then it will have to be in beds with hardware cloth laid under the beds. I will be tryiing your method for potatoes as I can keep a mesh layer between the crop and the rodent. I will be investigating non-poisonous ways to encourage them to go elsewhere. Thanks for the great videos and the best to you.
When we lived where there are slugs, we had no ground squirrels or no large garden spot or hay. Now that we live where there are no slugs and a large garden plot, we now have hay and ground squirrels. LOL
We aren't there all the time, so a cat would have to live outside. There are way too many coyotes for that to be a good plan. Maybe when we are there full time we will have a cat again, but hopefully the ground squirrels will be long gone by then, and the kitty would be mostly for pleasure.
Hey guys! We've posted a follow-up video with a bunch of background information regarding our location, hardiness zone, rainfall, etc. It might be helpful to any of you who are interested in trying this method in your own garden, but are curious if it will work for you: ruclips.net/video/BrAJbE0ZTA8/видео.html
One should be smart enough to realize that condition vary across the globe. If you can't figure that out it's not the author's fault. You don't have to be a troll.
Consider adding pulverized limestone and a lot of it. Activates the nutrients in the soil to be pulled into the plant for more nutrition for you. Check out www.howtosavethefarm.com and www.growersmineral.com
Store potatoes in a box or airy bag (not plastic, etc,) in a cool, dark, reasonably dry place,such as a basement, cellar, or under the porch. Just don't eat any sprouts that might
grow.
You could try rock crusher dust, if memory serves that, mixed with flour and soil buried at the roots of a tree will revive it and massively increase production.
I tried in on the stump of a plum tree 10 years ago and it produced 3 buckets of plums just last year.
Got the idea out of an old book called "Bread from Stones"
@@Oryxification Don't use fast acting or hydrated lime. It will kill your plants.
My grandfather was an old Irish potato farmer who swore by a technique that always worked. When the above ground, green part of the plant began to flower, he "stepped down" each plant. He simply stepped on each plant, bending and crimping off the main stalk, but not severing it. This caused the nutrients to slowly migrate from the upper part of the plant to the potatoes themselves. The number of potatoes produced by each plant stayed the same, but the potatoes themselves would increase in size between 20-50%. He said this technique had been shown to him by his grandfather in Omagh, Ireland around 1890. I've seen it with my own eyes and it never misses.
I'm going to give this a shot on a row this season. Thanks for the tip
I’m going to try as well. Thank you. My grandfather and mother both grew up farming potatoes in Ireland (Roscommon) and they never taught me any of this. 😂Thank you
Good luck guys! Please respond to me if it made a difference:)
I imagine the ideal behind that is much like trimming tomato plants. They say pinching off the small limbs that grow near the base of larger limbs, as well as pinching off early blooms, allows the nutrients to focus on going to the main part of the plant instead of going to parts that are unnecessary. Thus it supposedly helps your tomato plant grow bigger and produce more crop.
@@Gutslinger right. The reason for that should be that the plant gets stressed and starts focussing on growing more fruit so it can reproduce before it potentially dies or gets to weak to make fruit
We've planted raw potatoe peelings under piles of old hay every year for 50 years. Enough success to feed family plus our growing grandchildren!
Leigh Burville awesome!!!
What kind of potatoes? :)
Peelings?! Just that?!
@@aleksitjvladica. ...Yes! Don't throw them out! They all have ability to sprout and grow. Thick peelings are best, some already sprouted old potato chunks all have the capacity to grow into great potato crops Good eating !
Wow, thank you, I always though peelings don't have enough resources to grow, I will keep that in mind, maybe I will plant by myself, I like to raise plants and fungus, also this method from the video is new to Me, it looks revolutionary.
I didn't want to bother ordering potatoes from seed companies so I just bought a couple bags of organic potatoes at the store, let them chit, and planted them in my raised veggie bed filled with mushroom compost. All I did was water a few times and waited to harvest them. I didnt' know how they'd grow so I was thrilled with the amount of harvest - I also got around 10 potatoes for each potato I planted. And, from planting in the mushroom compost, they came out almost totally clean! Delicious, fun to raise, and absolutely no work involved. A total winner for this 72 year old grandma!
huehue the potato company is going to sue u for using their breed of potatoes without buying
a license huehauehuaheuhauehuaheu
This year my potatoes began to grow, so cut off those pieces, set aside and forgot them (while doing a 3 day painting project). Cooked the rest. Turned out they worked in the raised bed. Waiting to see if they are determinate or indeterminate.
Note: Sweet potatoes are different as I found out the vines are edible. The bunnies ate them down to the nubs. Sigh! They are not the only ones who keep putting off installing a garden fence.
Gooooo Grannie!!! Good job. I miss my granny dearly. It was nice to read your post ,I thought if my granny when I came across it.
That is amazing!
Nice !! I’ve never heard of anyone using mushrooms as compost. I’m gonna give this a try. Thanks for sharing 😊
2019: If I was rich I'd buy a big house and a Ferrari
2020: If I was rich I'd buy a farm
BradK If I was rich I’d buy a private island!
Can get an acre for 30-50k in the east coast in semi rural areas
Don't worry 4 years from now you will flip back.
Why not both ;)
Yes!!!
Having spent a considerable part of my life in a tropical farm, I'm constantly impressed by the courage of some people in sticking bare hands into a pile of mulch.
haha, guess it depends on your area, I do almost everything with bare hands but I live in southern europe where there are very few dangerous insects or snakes etc.
I live in 6a with black widow spiders in the woods behind me.
yeah, lucky buggers, I won't do it here in NSW, it's funnel web spiders, redback spiders, eastern brown snakes, red belly black snakes and massive centipedes here for me unfortunately...
Where I live, rattlesnakes be chilling in leaves and mulch.
There's things that don't kill, but hurt.
There's things that don't kill, but will cause sickness.
There's things that kill in days.
There's things that kill in hours.
There's things that just kill.
You have snakes, big and small. Arachnids, with and without venom.
Insects, urticating, venomous, or just simply strong biters.
Fuck me i look INTO gloves and boots before putting them on, let alone shoving my evolutionary acquisition straight into that pile of lurking dangers
Wish you could grow burritos that way
Silly, burritos come from burrito trees, not tubers.
+s c - Why " grow " burritos? Just eat enough Potatoes.... Pretty soon you will look like a burrito! Best of all, it will be all " natural + organic " too! 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
OR BACON. DEAR SWEET BACON
Have you tried?
Burrito Farts and Potato Farts smell the same... Does that count? 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
I somehow made it to a video about 337lbs of potatoes, and I'm not ashamed this is awesome.
I thought it was a fat girl porn video, but I was impressed by the real potatoes
@@TheWormzerjr Best snarky comment ever. Bravo
Follow your default
And somehow you got 337 likes! I can't upvote or I'll ruin it!
Build yourself a potato clamp to store your potatoes, a bed of dry straw, pile on the potatoes, a nice cosy covering of insulating straw then cover its soil. Put a few upturned plant pots on top of the straw about every 6’ to create breathing holes through the straw and that’s it.
Wow, first video I watched in such a long time that 1) Kept me interested 2) Was not click baity 3) Wasn't filled with drama and the usual BS 4) No annoying background music 5) Extremely fun and informative! Great pacing too. Nice job guys you earned a new sub! I hope you guys hit the 100K
Agreed, youtubers need to take lessons from this great channel!
And without their way of speaking making it seem like they have a personality disorder. It was refreshing.
Way better than the usual mindless RUclips bullshit!
I wasn't even in the mood for another ruth stout potatoes video, and I didn't have one annoyance or complaint. Rare for me.
Wish I lived next door to you, such enthusiastic gardeners. I put my first Ruth Stout garden in ..in about 1965. As I fade into the sunset I wish I had someone to share all I have learned over the years..you are doing a really good job of informing the uninitiated....love your informative straight to the point delivery....thank you.
I wish I had someone like you next door. We are trying to get an old farm up and running. So hard with all the rain.
Marjorie please make a youtube, i and im sure others would love to hear more about your gardening knowledge!
Marjorie, Denver CO salutes you and from me and my family "WE LOVE YOU" . Sharing your knowledge is invaluable. We care about learning and listening to our elders. They have walked the hard road so we can read the map. Thank you again.
Do not go gently into that good night.
Teach us ! You know how to take videos of kids or grandkids? Do that! Type up methods or get them to help. I'd love to learn anything you'd teach, it shouldn't be forgotten !
This is such a beautifully wholesome channel.
No Clickbait titles. No Drama to get views.
Just sharing what you are doing and what you are learning, and always with a smile.
Thank you, I really love it.
my grandpa told me about how he has grown potatoes like this for decades and I was hoping to find a video on it, nice work!
Storing potatoes (and carrots) the old fashioned way in Scotland was to dig a pit put the potatoes in chuck some soil on top then straw. As kids it was our job to go and tunnel into them to bring some into the house for cooking. Turnip or swedes were also stored this way. Kept for months.
Neat idea! My Dad used to plant them in stacked car tires, three tall or so. Just push them over when they are ready, no digging, and pretty much rabbit proof.
Sounds clever, I might try that :)
That is pretty much how my husband and I plan on growing our potatoes.
You may want to look into the carcinogenic effects of tire rubber before doing that, the plastics can leach into the soil pretty easily, and you seriously don't want to eat that.
It's simple enough to build a wooden frame instead, and you can actually get a larger planting area like that.
People worry too much.
@BornToRunBarefoot Dad worked for the EPA.......if you don't know what those letters stand for, look it up.
It's astounding that you can get lush, beautiful soil simply from itself laid over top and composting. It's amazing how it's free to grow food and yet they make it look like it's so hard and no one can do it when anyone can do it. I love this idea and I am likely going to do this when I build my own homestead.
Back to nature as in the old days well done
I watched this video in 2019 and tired it. AMAZING potato crop that year. Last year I did it again and had even a better crop of potatoes. This year I've expanded my potato patch and I'm going to grow less corn because we eat more potatoes than corn. My wife due to health issues can no longer eat corn.
We've grown a large garden each year since 1981. When we owned a farm we had a 1/2 acre garden. We've canned and froze all types of food since 1981 but this way of growing potatoes is the easiest thing I've ever done in the garden. Thank you so much for sharing this video about the Ruth Stout method of growing potatoes.
I wanted to say thank you for including hand-written closed captioning subtitles. Having to rely upon auto-generated can really suck (sometimes like a septic pump, that level of suckage). So it's wonderful to see actual comprehensible text that matches the actual audio, and/or provides additional information for readers to enjoy. Thank you!
Also wanted to say you have a wonderful voice with excellent diction, and I love the graphics you use when explaining things. (I may have said that on another video, but it bears repeating, lol.)
I live on the 3rd floor of a cramped Boston apartment building. I haven’t seen grass in weeks. Why am I watching this? Who cares! It’s very interesting!
You could hang a garden box out the window.
I've always grown my potatos in pots, they are so easy... good luck to you
Grow 2 plants!
Check out the Tower Garden 2, gardentowerproject.com/ I have one and love it.
You can grow in bin bags. Plant them in layers as the green comes up add another layer.
Greetings from India. Thanks for sharing your thoughts and experience. May your pantry /kitchen be loaded with veggies all year long. Regards...
What a nice comment :) wish you well
Greetings from California...😊
Blessings your way Cyrus.
I read that imagining the hindu accent 😂
@@heros670 hindu accent? Hindu is a religion and hindi is a language n not all indians are Hindus or hindi speaking people.....we are so diverse, we dont all have the same language or the sam colored skin or food
I can tell you from years of experience that deer will mow down potato plants like there is no tomorrow. It did take a few years before they acquired a taste for the plants, but once they did our production dropped by about 75% simply because the plants could never develop any tops for very long with out a nightly mowing by the local herd. They started with carrot and onion tops being their favorite. We had about 2.5 acres of potatoes at one point, which eventually dwindled down to one row of about 75 ft. We tried everything short of a fence only because it was cost prohibitive to fence that big of an area with 9' fence.
This is the oldest type of farming that is not being practice in this modern days yet it still the best method.
highly depends on where you live, digging up the ground might be more work but the plant is better protected from wind and weather in less habitable regions
You're confusing farming and gardening.
“lazy beds’
They were used a lot were there was very little soil.
@@BenjaminGoose both usually go hand in hand
@@fainitesbarley2245 lol, I like that! "Lazy Beds"!
The key thing you failed to talk about. Unless it wasn't that key to you. :-) The great time you get to spend with your wife while preparing, planting, harvesting these food items. My wife and i talk and laugh during these times. Most couples never get to spend this awesome time together. Thanks for the video
Michael, you hit on something important. Any couple that gets physical and not just in the bed have more GLUE binding them together. Fact. My hubby and I laugh and laugh and laugh. Not just in the garden, either!
@@Leveraction-xr4uz that's amazing! I grow in London, UK on a 8 x 4 feet raised bed! It's exciting to grow food.
How about expanding that time with neighbors and friends. Sharing, working together, getting to know other human beings other than our spouses more closely. Networking. Learning facts together. Power to the people, yes?
babies can even be made in the potato patch
MAN in FIELD, WOMAN in HOUSE. MAN bring FOOD. WOMAN make MEAL
Great topic. Just like to add a couple of friendly FYI's on your potato topic. I live in southern Idaho (aka Potato Capital of the World) and was raised by a University of Idaho Ag Crop Advisor an am one myself. 1st, not everywhere is able to get by without watering so irrigation is important to spuds. 2nd, Norlands. This spud was developed to be a French fry potato and they suck as a baker. Lastly, to increase your production, you need to continue to add soil, or in your case used straw, on top throughout the season. Do that & it should help. As far as storage, put them in a potato/burlap sack. Each one should hold around 100 lbs. When my dad built our house, he built a vegetable/fruit bin our garage. It's about 4 ft long, 4 ft tall, 2 1/2 ft wide made out of plywood with a matching lid. It sits on top of a concrete floor and is insulated with board Styrofoam. Hope this helps.
Guy H
Do you let them dry before storing? If so, how long? Do you rinse the dirt off, brush it off, or just leave them dirty?
Your videos are really good and useful. I SMILED WHEN i watched the graphic of your expanding garden outside the fence. My garden started 10 + years ago in a few 5 gallon buckets with tomatoes. I now have half my 1/4 acre back year planted with something or another. I call it hobby grown out of control. 😀
Fantastic! We used to grow potatoes the hard way, but yum arent the worth the pain. At 70 you know i am going to watch your next video on this permaculture method! God bless you for sharing. Blessings, linda
Woah.. this is actually a method??
I did this with my mom’s garden back in high school. I knew I wasn’t lazy 😂
This is one of the most wholesome videos i have seen in recent months! The best harvests to you both!
Ruth Stout was a great gardener. Her book is a game-changer. Everyone should get her book if they plan to plant a garden.
I especially like how at the end you gave your learning experiences. Y’all do such a great job.
Thank you so much!
Please do a video on winter potato storage.
You can always can them
In a fridge or somewhere were the temperature stays a few degrees above freezing and they will last without sprouting for at least 12 months.
Wash and dry completely, store in a underground cool environment, in sealed divided containers.
@@charleshelgeland5238 I the days before electrical appliances, people would just put the potatoes in 100lb burlap bags and store them in a dry, dark place like a cellar. They would sort them by size also, so that was convenient for the cook, who could pick the size needed from two different sacks.
Slicing and dehydrating any extra can be used later for stews or au gratins or whatever you want to try.
One of the most enlightening videos I have ever watched. No bs, just a straight forward, informative video. Kudos. I look forward to retiring in the next two years and I want to start growing my own veggies when I buy my new property. This video is now in my favorites list.
You must have different kind of deer than I have. Mine LOVE potato leaves. I came across your video because I have very little soil where I live (LOTS of rock!) I also have lots of pine trees so I'm going to try planting under piles of pine needles instead of hay.
For storage: Pressure canning and freeze drying are both awesome ways of preserving a harvest. If you're unable to get a home freeze dryer, then you can simply store some of your potatoes in a root cellar and pressure can some of them. The pressure canned potatoes are best used for things like fried and mashed potatoes or potato soup (adding your milk and thickeners AFTER opening the jars, of course!). They do get very soft but they fry up beautifully and mash nicely when they're well drained, just add some milk and butter and you have a lovely mash. :)
In my 36 years of growing a garden I've never heard of canning taters and we keep 400 - 800 lbs of taters each year in a our tater shed and they keep up till June each year. I'll have to look in to that.
In Newfoundland just about everything was in the cellar, packed with sawdust in barrels. Turnip, cabbage, and I think potatoes too.
New friend here! Excellent video for teaching someone like me who has no experience growing anything. With the costs of everything going up, this looks like a great way to grow potatoes. Thanks for sharing!
We started a Ruth Stout garden this past spring. I never had such an easy garden. I watered once this entire season; during our two weeks of 90 plus degrees and no rain. Never had to weed and our harvest was abundant.
We will definitely continue growing this way.
Awesome! Any tips for a beginner?
James Pinto: Mow your grass low (your going to dull your blade), put down some clean compost (I used rabbit manure), and make the hay or straw at least 8” deep. If you start now you will have to add more hay in spring; it breaks down pretty quickly.
Ok, so I can use sawdust or wood chip mulch to keep critters out, grow expensive purple and Japanese white sweet taters, make lots of money, and avoid arthritis from nightshade potatoes. Plus avoid cancer and diabetes with super healthy sweet potatoes.
Nice gardening 337 lbs is a lot of potatoes. Well done. Enjoy future harvesting.
Wow! A ten fold yield is awesome! If you cut up your seed potatoes next year remember to spread them out in a cool place for a week; they need to heal up a bit before planting otherwise they'll rot. And old-timers never washed their potato harvest; they seem to keep better with a film of soil. Godspeed
Like fresh eggs, no wash
Well yes the moment they're exposed to water they think it's time to seed it again and rot can happen. And the leftover soil around the potatoes could absorb some of the moisture that could potentially hit the potatoes and cause it to rot faster
I'm about to eat like a king in the second great depression thank you!!!
Bruhhhh HAHAHA
You are not lying... plant up!
Now you really need to plant lmao
My thoughts exactly!
'No Dig' is definitely the way to go. My Mom used this method for all of her 'root' crops. I'm now 61 and this method sure saves my back!
My grandparents had a small garden behind their house on sawhorses. I dont know why people dont do that more often. Waist level growing is the way to go.
Yes. The old boys up at the allottments are very cynical when I say I’m doing ‘no-dig’. They call it ‘television gardening’. We will see how it goes at the allottment show later this year.
I'm 18 and have pretty bad back pain from an atv wreck when I was 15. I may do no dig potatoes this year.
How wonderful to see your video. I have gardened like that for 30 years or more. I am a life long follower of Ruth Stout and Scott and Helen Nearing. I have been ridiculed for years for throwing potatoes on new ground and covering them with 8 to 12 inches of mulch. A great way to break new ground, with potatoes and worms. :)
Just another Tip if you replant as you harvest and pile on the mulch to keep them from freezing you wont have to go back an plant later.
However.....
you can also leave the potatoes in the ground till needed by simply piling on more mulch in the fall. using a pitch fork lift the mulch to harvest as needed through out the winter and leaving one potato in the ground for each plant you harvested and mark with a stick where you leave off. this method was used in Central Texas by an old farmer. he left his root veggies in the ground and harvested as needed so he didn't have to try and store them in the winter above ground. so we had fresh carrots potatoes beets turnips when ever we needed them. Straw was used to keep the root veggies warm in the ground dormant until spring then they came up on their own and I'm now living in the Pacific Northwest and I'm doing the same thing here and it's working just as well.
Dreamylyn Moore man...those old timer farmers sure did have creative thinking...common sense,whatever,but very wise in their skills...god bless the farmers...
This is what Paul Gautschi of Back to Eden does, too. He harvests and plants on the same day, replanting the biggest and best potato WHOLE.
That didn't work for me in my climate, 60 inches of rain or snow in the winter, the potatoes rotted where I mulched them in.
Yeah that could be an issue on the west side of the cascades but here on the east side in south eastern Washington we are much dryer. The only way it may work for the wet areas would be in grow boxes sheltered from some of the rain during the rainy season. one would just have to experiment to find what works best in their area. Not all of Washington is as wet nor as green as y'all are over there.
Check with local nursery's some will give away or sale at very reasonable prices there big black tree pots I've got 4 of them an i compost in them and just plant right into them. you could drill lots of holes in the bottoms and sides and start 2 to 3 potatoes in the bottom and cover in straw, grass clippings, leaf mulch and then cover when it rains with clear plastic. could even over winter in a garage or shed that way and pull them out in the spring when it begins to warm up. just some idea's if you want to try growing them. I've got a couple of old sliding glass doors i got from a friend no frame just the doors. and some raised beds made from pallet wood thinking of making a couple more grow boxes and using them for lids in the winter to protect some of my winter greens like a cold frame. that might be an option for you over on the west side with all the rains. my pallet wood grow boxes are single pallets cut in half. 2 halves screwed together side by side and then one on each end. then we used weed cloths on the insides to keep the compost and soil inside. using old ceder privacy fence board screwed along the top to make nice place to set and work and to hold it all together giving it a finished look. everything was free. even the dirt inside was all composted from leaves sticks twigs we raked up in the fall, bunny manure, weeds and food scraps. Let set over winter, then even though it wasn't all composted I just put pockets with small shovel of dirt and planted tomatoes and cayenne peppers right in and let them grow. they are still covered in tomatoes so we added 2x4 posts at each end and across the top. I should have tomatoes till late November or even into December if we don't get to cold. and all I'm doing is covering them in clear plastic. we have also topped it off with more leaves now it's fall. you can use composted animal bedding from farms in your area too. i have to tell you they were the best tomatoes I've grown in years. another cool thing about it i didn't have to water as much could go days without water it stayed so moist even on 110+ degree days. my neighbors tomatoes and the ones we had in the ground wilted and looked pitiful. hope this gives you some ideas. Happy gardening :)
Same here, near Olympia
I'm patiently waiting for next year's BASKETBALL SIZED onions :) :)
My blueberry's are that size.
Woah there! Start with softball sized! Basketball will come the year after that!!
Just found you. Nice video, though I wanted to point 1 thing out...my family grew a LOT of spuds growing up and we always cut each seed potato into several chunks before planting. Makes your seed potatoes go further. Just make sure each chunk has an eye on it.
Yes, near the end he commented on the fact that they did not cut their seed potatoes, due to time constraints.
Recently bought 5 acres of wooden property. Building a tiny house..and this video is exactly what we plan to do with most of the surrounding ground.. Amazing harvest; and invaluable info!
You said that you were planting garlic. My parents always planted them under plants that got eaten by bugs. We have beautiful roses because they were never eaten because of the garlic around them.
Instead of garlic use lavender! Even better!
@@flaviusnita6008 Even cilantro will ward some pests, I believe. Perhaps a mix? :)
That is just an 'old maid's myth'...insects do not care about the smell of garlic.
I think its more that they cant eat it so they will just go to an actual food source...
We’ve always planted chrysanthemums for insect protection. They’re nasty smelling but they discourage eating insects and encourage bee activity.
To take care of mice is to go to a local sawmill and get sawdust. The sawdust will collapse when the mice try to burrow. Also you can rob the hills anytime after the plant blooms. I was doing this around 1970
neat trick
so do you do layers of sawdust in with the soil or mix it in?
Having a cat might also help here ;)
@@xenafaegolden3019 Possibly too, but I feel like my cat wouldn't like the straw too much and use another piece of the garden with just clean compost or soil :). Should only really be a real concern if you're pregnant and fear toxoplasmosis I think?
I usually till the soil and just put the seed potatoes on top of the tilled soil and cover them with a layer of sawdust and then 10 to 12 inches of straw. when the mice try to tunnel the sawdust collapses
I store potatoes and green tomatoes in pizza boxes. The cardboard keeps them dry, dark and they are one layer so keep much better. I have fresh ripe tomatoes all the way into mid February. Just keep them cool and check on them about every 10 days to get the ripe ones out.
Great tip, thanks!
Ĺ
So the green tomatoes will ripen to red?
@@bystandersarah yes.
@@bystandersarah Yes they do. Even grocery store tomatoes were green then just before they put them out they gas them to turn red.
I copied this method...this year and was really surprised the potatoes grew! I only planted a few, but the best fun was pulling back the straw , feeling like a kid at Easter time and keeping my fingernails clean! Epic!!!
Very useful video thanks for sharing! Just wanted to add...I learnt from a Hutterite Man named John that if you don't have any small potatoes for growing! You can cut up a large potatoe makinG sure every piece has a potatoe "eye" on it and then dip the pieces into ash to avoid any potatoe seedlings from goinG rotten! This method worked nicely for me many years ago and I grew awesome spuds!😄🥔
Awesome tip! Thanks Sandra!
I've Got The Cut Up Spuds, Though I Was Unaware About Dipping Them In Ash. Thank You For The Tips. I'm Learning More In The Comments Than In The Video. Though I Am Greatful For The Video. We Do Have A Family Of Hawks, And Two Rescued Kittens. With The Tips On Planting In Sections vs An Entire Bed, Therefore Leaving Exposure To Predators To Prevent Voles n SuchI Shall Give This A Try For My First Potatoe, Infact Gardening Experience
@@audrianaferreira Best wishes on growinG your potatoes! Ashes definately help with potatoes not goinG rotten...but there must be other thinGs that are just as effective!😄🥔
Years ago I read about and tried container gardening with potatoes. My only cost was purchasing some additives for my soil which was terribly poor for food growing. I got some free 10 gallon buckets that had been used for food storage, and my seed "stock" was peelings from potatoes purchased that year for food, so a free by product of what was going to end up mulch anyway. It was an experiment as I was not going to keep my home for more than one more year... Anyway I figure Just the peelings from about 20 pounds of assorted potatoes yielded over 40 pounds of harvest. This year I am sharing a house that stands on almost 2 acres of land. I am going to try my hand at a little gardening, mostly containers due to disability; and growing potatoes and other items that can be regrown from fruits and veggies purchased from the market (like carrots, onions, celery, etc) to stretch my very limited budget as far as I can. Ill keep records this time and see how my harvest compares to any investment I have to make to get it up and running.
Best way I have found to store potatoes is to can them! They will last literally years and taste great! But if I store them over winter with out canning I never wash them and store them in a well ventilated container in a cool dry dark area. they will last for several months. The key is don't wash them before storing.
No need for walking paths, double your yield by planting rows every 18". You're not going in to weed or anything, so there's no need for walking paths. You can harvest early from the edge.
This! Glad I read a few comments. This is exactly what I want to say as well.
He said that in video.
Wow! What a haul! Thank you for sharing your successful experience with Ruth Stout method.
Wow! That was a wonderful video. I had never heard of the Ruth Stout method until this video and I have been farming most of my life. I will definitely give this a try. Thank you so much.
Check into no till farming also
I had flashbacks to my youth when you dragged that box of previous years potatoes out to plant. Sweet memories of youth. I’m definitely going to give this a shot if we’re all around after covid-19.
Covid 19 isn't an automatic death sentence. We will be all good
Rich okay doc. Thanks for the reassurance. Not trying to be a sa but never underestimate a virus. Otherwise you’ll be scratching your head thinking I sure didn’t see that coming.
@@randygreen007 with a .5% mortality rate, i take more risks everyday driving to and from work
After watching this video, I’ve been binging a lot of your content and I have to say it’s fantastic! This is a great channel with awesome narration, animation, and overall quality content. It’s really making me desire to get my own land and do what you do!
Sharp Works I agree
I wish you have a wonderful land .
Your basically doing BTE gardening, I've been doing this for four years now I harvest and plant next seasons crop at the same time, planting in the wood chips is awesome there is no hilling at all the mushroom mycelium holds the wood chips together, yet are light enough to expand as the potatoes grow or even let's them push each other around, even over populated carrots push each other aside without any problems, awesome video thanks for sharing.
4:58 - the toad is like "shittttt they found me - I'm getting evicted"
Why would they do that they eat bugs?
Yes cut you seeds. All you need is a couple or 3 good eyes on each chunk this will save you on the amount of seed needed or give you more to plant.
My wife's grand father would sit in front of TV at night cut meaty sections out with a couple or so eyes on each and end up with a nice chunk of potato to cook out of each to cook his potatoe soup for lunch after we would plant. We alway planted a good half acre lol.
To help with your potatoes and get bigger onions I'd go with a deeper bed or pull bed back like in a harvest a few days before planting run a tiller through real quick and pull back. I say that because your onions were hitting hard ground and will grow bigger with softer dirt. My onions grow large on top a nice soft tilled hill so this should give same effect.
Remember white potatoes grow up and sweet grow down
White you can add to you bed hight a couple times sweet need to start high. If you try sweet don't plant seed. Early before planting you plant a draw bed kinda shallow seed close together let it sprout when those growths(draws) are around a foot high you you pull off from potato seed you lay it down on and push in with all four fingers from root end make sure that section is covered and give it a shot of water to start. That gives you a good root base to start. I still dirt farm but I grow a half to full acre and I grow good sweet potatoes using draws instead of seed plus that helps your sweets not to be stringy in the flesh. When you get a real stringy sweet is because it was from seed not draws. When you start your draw harvest select pick to thin them to pull your best ones and give space for smaller to catch up. I plant a row a day and takes me a week or more to plant all depending on the amount of seed and draw bed size I started with.
Thank you so much Jimmie!
Your comment is a great example of why I love coming down to the comment sections of these types of videos. Everyone's really nice and pours their brains out for what helped them and how it can help you.
Thanks, but what are Draws?
You seem to know quite a bit about Sweet Tators... I’m new trying to grow slips from the Organic purple store bought Sweet tator from a 🍠Half sweet suspended from a cup of water 💦 still no sprouts 🌱or growths after a few weeks. How would this be grown different from a regular potato 🥔 please? 🙏
@@siry5164
What I call draws is what you call slips. Just a regional thing I guess.
I cant say about the seed in a cup of water because iv never done it. But if your trying to grow slips/draws in the house I would get a flower pot the more you want to grow the bigger the pot or more of them. Just plant in pot and cover with a inch or so of soil and keep watered like a plant.
Look up Living traditions homestead on you tube. I'm almost certain they did a video on the seed in a jar of water..
Lol I'm use to growing a lot so I do my draws in a tilled bed outside so the pots in house should work.
Anyway check them out.
We used to store carrots and potatoes in sand in a wooden box in the dark basement which was a bit damp but the sand allowed the carrots and potatoes to stay dry and mold free....shake as much dirt off as possible!
Great tip! I didn't know that! Will have to try that. Thanks :)
Can confirm. I'm not sure where in Ontario these guys are, but I grew up in the Huntsville region. We used boxes about the size of a dresser drawer, stacked up on one another in an alternating pattern like bricks, to keep them stable. In each box, we placed a layer of dry sand about a finger deep, a layer of spuds, enough sand to cover them, and repeat the pattern until the "drawer" is full, with sand on top. They kept in the basement all winter, with no ill effect. We also sifted the sand, to get out any humus - but my dad was in construction, so this was as easy as simply turning on a machine and shovelling the sand in; I'm not sure if it was necessary, or a "just in case" measure.
@@adreabrooks11 that's great info, thank you! I'm in Ireland and things can get a bit damp here, but I'd say in our dry shed this would be an option too.
Just want to thank you for focusing on giving info. None of the tricks to make a video longer just for ad revenue. Thats an encouraging attribute that you truly need to be commended for. God bless
Thanks so much, I really appreciate that! :)
I just found you channel and I can't stop watching it. Congrats on the clear and pleasant presentation, nice pictures and interesting content. Just started a no-dig garden this year and I love it. Will be experimenting some more with permaculture next year. Can't wait for the next season!
Thanks for doing this video!! I haven't done potatos because I was afraid of the digging them up! I will have to try this next year. Thanks so much!
You're lucky to have that snake!
Around here we just don't have many slug and snail predators aside from birds and it shows! Slugs are my #1 problem in the garden, lizards like slow worms do feed on them but they're sadly rare.
Thank-you thank-you thank-you. Greatings from Italy.
I love seeing how your garden is working. It surprises me that you can get that kind of harvest without watering. Pretty cool. 😊
From the Western red cedars in the background, I believe they are in Western Washington. I'm sure their area gets more than the 12" a year of precipitation my area receives. However the technique is valuable anywhere.
@@jdude7650 They're in Canada. Not sure what part, but it seems like it might be back eastish. I think their families are around Ontario? I could be wrong, but I know they're in the Great White North. 😊
@@jdude7650 I grow potatoes and tomatoes in straw bales, living in Idaho, I do water them when the bales need it (I don't spread the bales out).
@@jdude7650 - they're somewhere outside of Toronto-ish. The no-till + heavy heavy hay mulch is what does the drought-proofing.*
* By which I certainly don't mean to imply a garden can be fully drought-proofed that way... it just does a pretty decent job.
@@carolbrandenberg9336 do you use any soil when you plant tomatoes into a straw bale? i just created my first straw bale-ish bed this season and was wondering how to safe proof the young seedlings until they establish root.
That's it, I'm planting a garden this year! Never have time normally. This quarantine does have some perks. I'm getting the family in the yard this year. I have tons of extra cocoa from the marijuana I grow indoors, this will work perfectly for onions & potatoes I think. A mix of experiments & farming. Hope it works
High potatoes: perfect for Irish cuisine. Thanks
Thank you guy's for sharing the video, I enjoyed it very much. Good luck next year.
Happy New Year.
I did this with store bought potatoes that I let go to seed. OMG the taters are very clean when you harvest them, and I've gotten so many, and I've only just begun to harvest them. I did reds, purples and white potatoes. We will definently have mo plenty of taters to eat this year.
I’m am very very interested in how you figure out how to store your produce. I planted potatoes one year and got a beautiful harvest but lost them all to bugs after harvesting. I was so discouraged. My neighbor said to leave them out to dry for a couple of days but flies got into them...
Well method we use is store them in cold basement in layers of clean sand, same can be done for carrots and other root vegetables, they will last that way up to 6 months (unless you eat them sooner :))
They will start to grow sprouts near end of storage time rather than spoil this way :)
For onions we make big wreaths out of them and let them dry hanged under roof outside before moving them into basement.
Sprinkle dehydrated lime powder (pickling lime) on them and store in a cool dark place like under a house or shed. That's how the old people use to do it.
@@DeathmanElf I wonder where you get clean sand from. Lol
I did the hay mulch thing, first year was successful, 2nd year, mice galore!!!
You can also use wood chips , I have used 4 layers of newspaper 4 inches of cow manure and about five or six inches of wood chips and that works absolutely awesome
I just have the dyed wood chips. Are they bad to use? Thanks!
@@Grammapamm well it depends on what they're dyed with, you don't want any chemicals or anything get in your ground
Thanks for sharing. My husband chops a lot of wood. We have a firewood business. One question though. How often would you water it or is it good to allow the rain to water it.
@@bossforever1865 well it depends usually you don't have to water it much especially in the spring and fall, the wood chips really do awesome job at retaining the moisture so we have a gravity fed watering system on a timer in the summer and it's usually set for an hour a day and we set it on driplets, we use the black hose with the adjustable nipples
@@colethomas2207 That sounds like a really nice set up. So, if you do that, I think I will try and save rainwater and get some water from the river to water it. That may be a lot of work, but I am trying not to use treated water. Maybe on a hot summer day I will break out the hose. Once they start sprouting, do you recover with mulch or hay?
The best I've seen so far. This I can do. From Trinidad
That was a great harvest! I really want to try this method of growing!
I think I’ve watched this 5 times over the last year. Great video!
Who would give a thumbs down to this. Thanks for sharing. Cheers
Commenting from Japan...if only our people had that much space to ourselves, we'd all be doing it! Many of us don't even have our own yards here...😢
Container gardens for other vegs can be surprisingly productive.
In fact, there are quite a few RUclips vids about growing potatoes in 5 gallon buckets!
A patio or balcony can be a great place to start.
Yeah stay in touch, I'm one of the same.. never considered the fact of straw as mulch
I find this method remarkable! However, please share how you preserve them future use.
As a potato farmer I can put an end to your potato cutting theroy. The smaller the potato seed (or Tuber as they are commonly known) the closer you can plant them. This is mainly due to the amount of eyelets on the potato and the potential energy stored within the potato.
that harvest would mean nothing without each other to share it with
Finally a good suggestion to watch how does one store the harvest to use them all winter?
Store them in a cool dark place
@@ptudor63 well thats a given but i mean long term
@@teamAmerica101 No joke i kept mine in un heated basement in dark corner they would last till April. If they get sprouts just break them off and use. Just dont put them in a refrigerator they get sweet and don't taste good. I done that one year to trying to get them to last longer
@@ptudor63 hmm i do the same but they just go mushy as they grow lol
@@teamAmerica101 the older they are they start losing moisture and wrinkle up and they get harder to peel .
You asked how to store potatoes. Dig a hole at least 4 feet deep. Throw the potatoes in it and cover with earth. In spring dig up your potatoes. This method was used in Ontario in the early 1900s.
What is a root cellar?
Dig a hole
Cover it
?????
POTATOES
because an higher or above ground they would freeze
In North Idaho, U.S., centipedes would lay eggs in potatoes left in my garden too long. The potatoes would be riddled with disgusting little curled-up centipedes. There was no practical way to get them out without making the spuds spoil faster. I discovered that there would be almost no centipedes if I did NOT add compost to the potato beds, and instead, fertilized with fresh manure tea, diluted.
4 feet deep?
This video hooked me on your channel. Very catchy video name. No digging? no watering? very little work? I'm in!
That's is so cool. Great harvest. So many varieties. Love how you work together to make it happen. Proud of your efforts. As a kid, we had a cold bin in the cellar where potatoes were stored, and rows of mason jars full of things mom put up. It was great fun to harvest the vegetables. I have a small garden just for the heck of it now, and it puts out enough for the summer. I sure look forward to your videos. Thanks for sharing them with us. 😊👍👍
You can store them in a cool dry place for several months. Personally I like to wash them, slice them thinly on the mandolin and dry the slices. I store them in jars and can prepare them in two ways. 1- Grind them up in the food processor and use them like potato flakes, and 2 - layer them in a pan with milk, cheese, butter and herbs for potato au gratin. Both ways are delicious and the dried slices will keep for years in a cool dry place.
That's a really neet idea. Is there anything else you can do like that?
Most any kind of fruit can be sliced and dried. Also meats can be salted and dried. As long as you store it in a cool dry place it can keep for years. I've heard of dehydrated apple slices keeping for 10 years and still tasting great, and I've personally had venison jerky that was 4 years old and tasted like brand new.
It's not really the same, but when I harvest tomatoes, I remove the skins and can the tomato sauce. I save the skins and dehydrate them. When they are totally bone dry I grind them in a spice grinder to make powder. The powder can be mixed with water to make tomato paste or tomato sauce - depending on how thick you mix it. Also can be used like a seasoning to give a tomato flavor.
Redrustyhill yep, root cellars are the best. Dark and cool.. just like potatoes like it. And apples too. I wish I had one.
Man, I’m impressed with your video! Will watch more.
great!!!
I really wish it was that easy. I eat potatoes like nobody's business so this would be such a money saver! Inspirational video.
Grow some gingers along side those babies! Aw boy the smell of fresh ginger is amazing
insuk barton Budding, like potatoes. Shallow growing. Honestly, from what ive seen, they grow best in tropical, and dont survive winter or store well
@insuk barton depending on where you are you may be able to regrow supermarket bought Ginger. If not just go to a like your nearest gardening store which may sell seeds and such.
Ml
Ginger??? That's only in semi-tropical climates, yes?
this is very inspiring and makes me wanna live on some land somewhere off grid!
Tell me, this wasn't divine Intervention!! I was just listening to a song, the song was saying " Back to life, back to reality, to the here and now" I hit subscribed.. Then watched your video. I'm about to have a Back to Reality day, me and my garden journal.. Thank you for sharing.
Wille Nelson & sons SHUT OFF THE TV & PLANT A GARDEN
That's an old song ya got there friend. I used to date a DJ back when that song was in. That was so long ago I wasnt even drinking age, shhhhh. I'm 51 now!
Planted potatoes few years back and one evening just as it was getting dark I watched the deer making supper of the potatoes leaves, they don’t eat the stems but everyone of my potato leaves were gone, I sure hope they enjoyed them! Oh to live in the National Forest
This is some awesome info, tips! Thank you!
Unfortunately I don't have the time or the space to create something as big. I'm going to attempt this with hay this fall in a much smaller 4x4 space. I have a family of 6 to feed, I think that will be plenty as long as we're patient enough to let it develop instead of continually harvesting the first year. But I think, if I can get it to work, the following year we can harvest as we want to eat something that includes tatters.
I have storage for several pounds of potatoes in my belly 😊.
Me too! Today I'm making smashed potatoes. Boil smallish potatoes. Smash with the heal of your hand and squeeze (using a garlic press) some garlic over it all, (and any other herb etc) on a baking sheet, bake till a little crispy on the edges. Yum!
Meeeeee to🙋💗
Let them store it at the Store... It's only $2.49 for a 10 lbs bag! 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
Most lazy people, think that way, Jordan.
+ken j - Hmmmm, you've found the word *" Lazy "* , but you didn't find the word *" Logic "* ??? I think you better look into the dictionary again and find " Logic " and then tell me what you think??? 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
Even though I live in an apartment building in an urban area, I find these videos interesting
ZiadK I’ve been growing so many things inside with grow lights
I've got tons of old hay, so I'll be mulch gardening soon. Might have to do this. And no watering sounds epic.
You guys are my model for what I want to do later with my life. I want to live on a nice hill, a lot above sea level, away from the cities. Near a river for fresh water. I want to have a huge variety of crops, herbs and maybe some animals. I want to save al lot of money by growing everything but stuff like bread ingredients, and I'll have money left over for high quality meat from healthy animals that didn't spend their whole life in a cage. It will be awesome.
we share a dream
Start as soon as you can. Learn. Research. Grow and survive.
I guess there are no ground squirrels where you guys are living. Lucky you. I had a plot cleared off near a wheat field, planted a small potato crop and they ate every one. They have riddled the area with holes, and it will be impossible to grow anything until they are gone., and then it will have to be in beds with hardware cloth laid under the beds. I will be tryiing your method for potatoes as I can keep a mesh layer between the crop and the rodent. I will be investigating non-poisonous ways to encourage them to go elsewhere. Thanks for the great videos and the best to you.
Carol Wickenkamp exactly. Also, slugs love hay.
Get a cat.
They will get rid of those squirrels.
I never see any ground squirrels any more since the 2 cats...
When we lived where there are slugs, we had no ground squirrels or no large garden spot or hay. Now that we live where there are no slugs and a large garden plot, we now have hay and ground squirrels. LOL
We aren't there all the time, so a cat would have to live outside. There are way too many coyotes for that to be a good plan. Maybe when we are there full time we will have a cat again, but hopefully the ground squirrels will be long gone by then, and the kitty would be mostly for pleasure.
Mint works will to keep rodents away.
I love your work. I work with inner city perm for sweet potato here.
A great reality check on how to be efficient and ultimately productive...