top of page
This site was designed with the
.com
website builder. Create your website today.Start Now
No Work Potatoes

 

This is the method of planting potatoes in a deep mulch on uncultivated ground

How We Started

 

This deep mulch potato planting technique was passed on to the Perth Dupont Community Garden in the spring of 2009, from another community gardener. She called it the "No Work Potatoes" from popular organic gardener Ruth Stout . We took one bale of straw, and spread it out over a 1m X 1.5m area, over our potatoes, so that the straw was fluffed out -about .5m high. (In This picture example, we used about 8 bales to cover 20' X 13' garden aera)

It was wonderful! The potatoes got a good chance to expand, because there was no soil compressing them. As well, the straw acted as insulation, keeping the potatoes at an even temperature...18-20C (21C is room temperature). They never got hot. The added bonus was how soft the soil became; you could swish your hand in it, almost like water!

 

How it worked out

 

The Potato patch does not need to be weeded, so, in the picture on the top right we placed the potatoes on the ground in two patches that were 1-1/3m wide (5' wide) and 5-6 meters long (about 20').

 

Planting: Use your rake to remove large pieces of debris on the area for planting. (that's it, no digging needed) The potatoes were placed about 20-30 cm. apart, not exactly in rows, but evenly distributed across the whole area. We tossed a shovel full of compost on each potato. For this project we used about seven or eight bales of straw.

 

We found that, at least in our limited experience, this method did not compromise the yield.

 

 

bottom of page