earthing up potatoes

[Gyn_Paul]

I've grown lots of other stuff in the past, but I've never grown potatoes before this year. On my new vegetable garden (wrestled root-by-root from its former existence as part of a sheep field) I find - having cleared and dug the space and finally planted the potatoes (not to mention the rest of the stuff) - the one thing I'm short of is soil ! 

Soil, loose, earthing-up for the use of.

Since earthing-up seems to me to be essentially keeping the light from the plant stems, could I use grass cuttings ? - not the newly-cut green stuff, but the brown stuff cut a few weeks ago. Not much bare earth in my field, but plenty of grass... oh yes.. no shortage of that stuff. In fact, looking at the grass piles, I could probably bury each potato to a depth of about 6 feet!

I don't envisage it being either sufficiently deep or dense around the plants to rot down in that runaway, high-temperature way a big grass heap does, just enough to form a light-proof blanket. I imagine it will continually settle and sink, so there will be almost continuous topping-up to be done, but, as I said, I'm not exactly short of the raw material.

Killing two birds with one stone, as it were. Just so long as it doesn't kill the pots as well.

Any down-sides to this idea?

paul

[Clair]

Chris pp has an interesting page on his Planet Passion website.It might inspire you:

http://www.planetepassion.eu/WILDLIFE-IN-FRANCE/Growing-potatoes-above-the-ground-France.html

[Gyn_Paul]

Ah.. yes. Thanks for that, Clair. V. interesting. Sounds like just the way to go.

Clearly, it's bucketing down where you are, too, and you're NOT out in the garden either!

p

[Clair]

Chucking it down here too! [:'(]

I did do a bit of temporary planting yesterday, courgettes and pumpkin, in preparation for later in the spring. It's still too cold for tomatoes, although I have prepared the pots.

[Gyn_Paul]

Don't talk to me about bloomin' tomatoes...

a packet of v.expensive f1-hybrid toms of the grape variety. All 12 of the seeds germinated in my warm loft room, then got a bit leggy as there isn't a whole heap of light up there, just 4 velux, so I put them outside yesterday to get a bit of sun and air, and when I came to bring them in late yesterday evening (still showing 13 C on the thermometer) the lot had fallen over and not one seems inclined to stand up again....

I'll wait until the plants are in Dun Le Palestel market, I think, like last year, and hope for a dryer, less rot-inducing summer!

p

[woolybanana]

SUNNY HERE, as usual[:P]

[krusty]

keep safe , earth up [;-)]

[IMG]http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o241/Trouble1st/electric-shock.gif[/IMG]

[dragonrouge]

Cloudy here and very near Fontenay le Comte.  Another argument to chit or not to chit and indeed I have already seen a colorado beetle!

Fingers crossed

[Russethouse]

 I seem to remember that the Gardeners World wisdom is to only chit first early's, it's not worth it for the others......

[Gyn_Paul]

I use the well-know process of  'auto-chitting' whereby you buy the potatoes with every intention of wasting no time and putting them straight in the ground, but by the time you get round to clearing the land, digging, and generally preparing the place they are going in, you discover that the poor things are trying to make the best of a bad job and are already filling the sack with shoots and roots. Suffice it to say that when I plant my potatoes, there is seldom any doubt as to which way up to plant them !

Am I alone in being almost two separate people where the garden is concerned? - there's this one person who goes to garden centres and buys plants, who also pick up endless packets of seeds practically every time he goes to the shops. And then there's this other person who says, " where the hell are this lot going to go?" and, "when am I going to find time to plant all these seed? and - assuming even half of them actually germinate - see question 1 above."

p

[Judie]

[quote user="Gyn_Paul"]

Am I alone in being almost two separate people where the garden is concerned? - there's this one person who goes to garden centres and buys plants, who also pick up endless packets of seeds practically every time he goes to the shops. And then there's this other person who says, " where the hell are this lot going to go?" and, "when am I going to find time to plant all these seed? and - assuming even half of them actually germinate - see question 1 above."

p
[/quote]

Absolutely not!!

I have every good intention of sowing those so interesting or good value seeds that I find in the shops, but by the time I pluck up the courage to take out the packets to see what I should do, the time for sowing is long past.