I think that’s right. Penny’s can’t take that kind of pounding.
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Yes you are, still paying some tax. This situation is exactly how our farmers ended in the corner where they got hit. If you take the money you have to obey. Right action Kristijan!
This video might interest you. I see some permaculture in your actions. But I was thinking of potato Tom.
My wife found her on YT and subscribed, on my account 
. Two videos a day. She somewhere from former Yugo but it translates well.
My eco period is over, you just cant have it all. But according to the chief we start the garden again. And the bathroom…. And the kitchen… and… and…, first woodgas ( think not spoken )
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I tried this about six-seven years ago, we got roughly the same amount of potatoes that we planted out of it and the voles ate about about six seven times that.
They had a field day if you will 
But that doesn’t mean the same will happen for you. It does work for some people.
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Thanks. Good to know. That will temper everything . I might end up with some free time. Dreaming is allowed.
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There is plenty of people that it does work for, perhaps it was too wet when I did it, or the wrong spot, or many voles that year, or…or…
Did only try one year and it was just when we started to have a lot of chickens so there might have been an explosion in the amount of voles then since there was abundant food in the fields from chicken spilling food everywhere. Not really a way of knowing but we went to traditional potato planting instead.
Perhaps I’ll give it a shot again this year just to see.
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My wife is slowly getting excited. We might try some of her ideas. There was a year we fully ate from the garden. Never forget that taste. Based on the ideas of ‘Makkelijke moestuin’
In short raised beds. My wife suffers from reuma, so all the hard work is up to me. Like I said, you just cant have it all. To bad, tast, healthy etc.
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Homegrown stuff does taste better, wheather it is higher quality, more nutrients or because your own love and work is put in it is fairly irrelevant, it feels good and tastes good. And the fact that you also save a buck or two is a big bonus 
An excited wife is also a big plus
If you both feel like it then go for it together, it doesn’t really matter who does what as long as it is together. More fun
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Joep. I looked it up and they do celebrate Valentine’s day in the Netherlands. That’s this Friday here. You could provide your wife with some nice raised beds like SteveU bought last year. How nice to be able to garden at waist level especially with mobility issues.
I have never seen anyone else plant potatoes on grass. I’d have to see her harvest to believe it was a good system. There are a lot of Ruth Stout people on youtube growing on top of dirt with hay mulch on top. Tried it once and it was the worst way I’ve done potatoes. Moles and voles got most of the meager crop just as Johan experienced. Last year I planted in the traditional way in the ground. If I had Don M’s potato harvester it wouldn’t be so bad but hand digging out of a trench is too much work for me. I’m going back to containers this year. As I have for the last 7 years. Maybe slightly less yield but dumping out a bucket is so much easier. I consider this English guy to be the number one potato grower on youtube.
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I missed that it was planted on grass, I was taught potatoes need dirt contact to grow.
Reading this reminded me of Charles Dowding on the same platform, he does most things no-dig.
I haven’t followed his channel (not enough hours to follow everything) but there must be potatoes in there.
Tom’s raised beds present seems like a great idea
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I realy think its the denser nutrients. A while ago l stoped looking at size of produce as evidence of my sucsess. Its the onions that opened my eyes
I keep my homegrown onions on a shelf above our outside door, so they regulary get exposed to frost, heat etc and rarely does any go bad, bolt or get soft. They keep till spring just fine. Well 2 years back we run out and l bought a 5kg sack, dirth cheap. Made me question my self for a second why do l bother with all the growing and then pealing the small onions l grow if the big ones from the store are so cheap. Well. I put them on the same outside shelf as l do my homegrown, and 90% of them were bad in a week. Ofcorse! The homegrown onion had to fight to survive on the feald, scavange for nutrients, dense pack them to form a small but concentrated bulbs, lots of sugars and inuline (wich act as antifreeze), while the storebought was fattened with god knows what fertiliser and spoiled from the seed up.
As for potatoes, l too got dragged in the modern click bait sistems. Some work or need to be adjusted.
I found growing under straw is exelent for early potatoes. Plant a small bed and prepare it real well (pest free) and just pick potatoes from under the straw, they regrow new ones. A small well kept bed with just a couple of plants will produce a huge amount of potatoes.
For the main crop classic is hard to beat. Best for me is plant classicly, hill when they sprout then hevyly mulch. Kinda best of both worlds
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I think your experience is pretty universal Kristijan. Not only do you not know what sort of soil and amendments the store bought onions were grown in, but you have no idea how long they have already been stored or what they were treated with to prolong their shelf life Let face it. Commercial growers are not out everyday rotation planting. They are stored and then distributed. Usually trucked long distances from places with suitable year round growing climates. This is especially true in the U.S. where it is common to get fruit and produce from places as far away as Brazil. If it comes out of Florida or California then it was drenched in pesticides while it was growing and many of them penetrate the flesh of the fruit or vegetable. It doesn’t scrub off many times.
I gave up growing carrots years ago. I have no idea how commercial growers make it profitable. Growing in regular garden soil they were always out muscled by the weeds with no way of weeding without pulling up the carrot sprout. Plus carrots were only about a dollar a pound at big US stores like Cosco, Walmart or Sam’s Club. I see they are up 25 percent this year. For reasons I mentioned I’ll be planting some this year but in weed free mediums. Here is a interesting video showing ways to plant carrots. Filling a large raised bed with sand and then proceeding seems like a lot of work for a simple carrot in my opinion but still a viable option.
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I’ve often wondered how they manage to sell carrots even cheaper than potatoes. It has to be a lot more work, even scaled up industrial.
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Yes, carrots somehow got cheaper in the last 10-15 years, I guess lots of farmers saw an opportunity in the same year and stuck with it.
We are trying new (to us) variety of carrots this year that supposedly stores well.
On another note, @KristijanL , may I ask if you know which variety of onions you have?
We have had pretty poor results with the onions we have tried. Some barely grows and some stored a pretty short time and we would like to store them as well and a year of storing is very appealing to us.
It could be that we are exeptionally bad at growing onions of course.
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Dehydrated onions reconstitute well Johan and work fine for most things. You don’'t want to dry them in the house though. Hard to get that aroma out and like they say, don’t ask me how I know.
You can grow 30 tennis ball sized onions in one of the 27 gallon totes I use for root crops in my GH, without over crowding. That’s more than we use in the course of the year and growing like that keeps the onion maggots out of your plants and in your own mix of soil, no harmful nematodes. No weeding required either.
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Hmm, it sounds like we have to think a little and perhaps change how we grow our onions and root veggies apart from potatoes. We have always planted root veggies as a small scale row crop and perhaps that is part of the problem.
I have a roll of conveyourbelt behind the barn that is dedicated to making raised beds from when we feel it is time, probably round with metal joined ends as it would be the easiest.
Oh and I enjoyed the carrot video, thanks
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Here is how the big boys do it.
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We think alike in terms of prepping. I follow Rain Country on youtube and I learned about dehydrating and making powders there, and vacuum sealing.
I focus on 1) calories. then I do 2) nutrition with Moringa powder, then minerals with molasses.
I bought a vitamix 5200 back in 2008 full price, then I found a used one on ebay for $150.00 which I got for backup, I use the thing two much not to have a working one.
My favorite tool for dehydrating is a onion slicer that has a checker board pattern, I use it to cut up sweet potatoes and bananas to slices that are all uniform thus they dry at the same rate in the excalibur.
I just bought a new toy a vacuum chamber 5 gal used for resin removing bubbles. I can vacuum seal 10 quart jars at the same time in this in 3 min, the advantage with this is I can re-use spaghetti jars and peanut butter jars in this unit so I can buy jars with food already in it, and re use them instead of buying mason jars.
Thanks for the tip about the Backwoods home article, I bought the CD version of the back issues… Cheers
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These are some good notes for hydroponic carrots.
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This is an interesting way to grow stuff. It makes me wonder if properly sized charcoal like engine grade charcoal ground a little finer could be used as a growing medium instead of perlite and vermiculite.
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I think it should Don. I’m using it in my potting mixes instead of perlite but still charging it before I do. Didn’t have any adverse reactions last year. I screen it through a 1/8 screen and then wash away the dust. I am trying to get to where I am not relying on store bought materials as much as possible. No longer buying fertilizer and just using JADAM. I bought bone meal for phosphorous last year but I’m looking for home brew alternatives this year. I have also used charcoal in the cups holding hydro plants but you could just as well use tiny pieces of gravel stones.
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