Traditional Irish Potato Planting in Beara

'Lockdown' in Spring, during the Covid 19 pandemic, is a perfect time to grow your own potatoes and other vegetables. And, there is no better, more environmentally-friendly and efficient way than to follow the old traditional methods as practiced by our ancestors for hundreds of years.
All you need is a spade, a bit of lawn and maybe a lesson or two ...
Go to the 10 minute mark on the video for the first steps (you could also look at my latest video, March 2021, • #Potato Planting ) for a less-expert but reasonably efficient way to dig and organically fertilise a ridge).
Above, you can follow local Beara man, Michael 'Murt' O'Sullivan, giving an expert demonstration of authentic, traditional ridge-making (these historically are called 'lazy-beds' but we are going to change that - lazy they ain't! One suggestion is that they be called Irish Smart-beds. Any opinion ...?).
Michael is a survivor of an extraordinary generation that kept alive the lore, craft - and indeed physical grace - of growing potatoes in the 19th C and before. No other record in existence is comparable.
Irish ridge-making was arguably the most efficient type of potato cultivation ever practiced in north-western Europe. Before the Great Irish Famine of 1845 '49, incredibly, up to 11 million acres were cultivated with this method. It was a superb example of a horticultural practice ideally suited to the climate and geology - and man and woman-power - of Ireland Yields of potatoes per acre using spades and ridges produced crops that have never been surpassed, even to this day (25 tons and more per acre!). And up to the coming of blight in 1845 we were the best-fed peasantry in the world. Uniquely, the Irish population grew by 400 per cent in the 100 years between the census of 1741 and that of 1841. What cannon-fodder we were for the Empire ...!
The spadesmen's intricate lore has been largely lost or difficult to access in old archives. However, I've pursued the subject for many years and was finally rewarded by finding in my neighbour Michael 'Murt', here in West Cork, all the skills, knowledge and expertise of his forebears. I was delighted and privileged that he chose to pass on to us what he knows. It is so typically modest of him that he finished up our last day's filming with: 'I never thought that anything I knew would be of interest to anyone.' Ni bheidh a leithéid arís ann.
There is here a huge and timely lesson for us all today: Listen to the wise and experienced and learn how to cultivate and grow in the most efficient and environmentally-friendly way. Then all else will follow; that the least amount of ground is used to produce sufficient (you can simultaneously plant onions, shallots and turnips on the edges and peas and beans amongst the potatoes) and healthy organic food to keep a family throughout the year.
Tip for maincrop: Buy potatoes off the shelves in the spring, cut the sprouting ends off the biggest of them, cauterise them with wood ash and store them exposed to the light. The sprouts will get green and strong (called 'chitting') and give you weeks of a start on the growing season (thus evading the blight season).