I know I said I was having April off Facebook but I couldn't help myself. I started a new area of the paddock garden today which I covered with weedmat a few months back. Today I removed that, chopped and dropped the spinach that was going to seed and then added 3 bales of peastraw on top.
This area will cost me about $54 for the peastraw (9 bales in total by the time I plant) and it is around 25m² in size. I will need around 150 seed potatoes to plant in this area if I am doing my math right going by how many I planted in my 11m rows last year. I will be using red rascal seed which I have saved from my own spuds. Otherwise if I bought the seed potatoes it would be I think next season around $19 a bag. So times that by 5 it would cost me $95 in seed spuds alone then add the $54 for the peastraw. I'll also mention I will be adding seaweed to this area as well and possibly some organic blood and bone. So overall it will have cost me about $65-$70 in total but if I had needed to buy my seed spud it would be closer to $150-$165
However even at say cost of $150 to create the space, if you were to end up with 200kgs of potatoes, that would be $400 worth if you were to buy spuds from the shop at $2 a kg (probably not these days). That is actually a blimmin awesome saving. I worked this out because 150 seed spuds averaging 1.5kgs each seed spud at harvest = 225kgs). This method of planting spuds also means I do not have to water the potatoes at all over spring and summer. I will however need to plant them a bit later because the soil won't heat up as fast because of the peastraw. Light coloured material takes longer to heat up. However I could top dress the area with fresh lawn clippings in spring and that would help warm it up. Will see what I do at the time.
So if you are looking to start a new garden but don't know where to begin then I suggest making a potato garden. Break the area in with potatoes and by late summer next year you will have a beautifully mulched down garden bed ready for your winter brassicas.
If you want to do this at home but haven't killed the grass of by covering it previously, then you can still do this but there's a couple of differences in the process.
First thing I would to is
- Mow the area you want to grow in as low to the ground as you can.
- Then get some cardboard (without coloured ink or waxy cardboard. They are no good) and lay that down on the grass. Make sure you take of the plastic. Give it a good watering then add a second layer of cardboard and water well again. This will help prevent light getting to the grass below.
- put down a nice 5-10cm layer of fresh grass clippings
- then add your peastraw (1 bale should do one layer on an area about 6-8m²)
- add a good helping of leaves. If you don't have deciduous trees on your property then go to your local park and collect a few bags full. Lay them on your lawn and run your lawn mower over them. This will chop them up and help them break down quicker.
- over winter keep adding extra layers of green and brown organic material. This could be shredded cardboard, leaves, watered down coffee grinds spread over evenly, grass clippings, green leafy veges, blood and bone and red frilly seaweed. Then eventually in about late July I would stop adding anything and let it sit to do its thing for a couple of months before planting.
When you do go to plant you just need to make a hole in the mulch and sit the potato directly on the original soil then cover back up. As the potatoes start growing you can mound them up using peastraw and lawn clippings. Don't put one or the other on too thick. Think of it as a nice light lasagne layer. I would do this ever 2 or 3 weeks over the growing season but stop the month before harvest. It will also help protect the plants from any late frosts.
When you finally do harvest your beautiful spuds they will be clean and not covered in dirt. Makes harvesting much less messy.
The two types of spuds I am sticking to are Red Rascal and Agria. A random bit of information from my observations about Agria. I planted these last year and they gave me the best haul per plant. For some reason they spread further out from the seed, easily moving through the mulch. This ment I was finding Agria spuds from one plant a good 50cm away from the main part of the plant. They were prolific. Red Rascal tend to stay more tightly packet in the area where the seed spud was placed as did the Heather seed.
So remember, gardening doesn't need to be back breaking or hard. Mimic mother nature and let her do the hard work for you.
Happy growing everyone xx
