Those are potatoes. I put some tomatoes at the ends of rows to simplify weeding. The one pic shows a grain amaranth plant I’m growing for seed, turns out it’s hard to find decent amaranth that isnt 8 ft tall or useless seed, I had a seed sample about 17 years old that was still viable. This kind reaches 4 - 5 ft, next year I can plant a significant plot. It also makes a good vegetable when young, a nice feature of thinning.
Oops, I hadn’t posted the amaranth pic…
Looks good Garry. Do you use those potatoes yourself or market them? How do you hill and dig them, by hand or machine?
The corn is actually a grain / flour corn, apparently formerly grown by North American indians in Quebec, where corn shouldn’t be a viable crop. Here it matures in about 75 days. I’ve never seen anything like it. I’m sure the cobs could be roasted when young, like they do in Mexico.
Those potatoes are basically all meant for sale. I use a scuffler for weeding, I need to make a blade attachment for hilling. A scuffler/ wheel hoe is about 100 times more efficient than hand tools.
I have been using a ripper for furrowing, this version will lift potatoes also. Next year I want to be set up with a better planter, and a chain type digger.
The magic with those potatoes is zero potato bugs, so they are never touched with pesticides. Plant and weed.
Yes be very glad you don’t have potato bugs they will really ruin your day.
So do you have to wash potatoes before you can sell them? My grandfather got out of potatoes in 52 when they told him he had to wash them because it was too much trouble trying to have a warm enough place year around to wash them as you can’t wash them before you store them.
I wouldn’t bother with potatoes aside from a garden plot if I had to deal with the Colorado potato beetle. I don’t feel good about slathering a food like that with insecticides. The commercial growers spray aerially every week. Very environmentally and safety questionable practice, they have so much territory to cover, they arent picky about spray drift or wind…
Organic potatoes hardly exist. Fortunately (or sadly) the rural population is thinning out so extremely that the last beetles I’m aware of are 3 or 4 miles away.
My soil in that field is very light, it mostly shakes off.
I need to rig up a washing trommel to really clean them up.
On a small scale potatoes can be washed before storage, but they should be dried in the sun after.
My grandfather farmed about 100 acres of them in the late 40s early 50s before he switched to a dairy farm. I really have no idea how he managed it outside of hiring a ton of manual labor you couldn’t find or afford today to pick them and that he worked insane hours.
When I raise potatoes I have to use this stuff
http://www.bonide.com/products/insect-control/view/687/colorado-potato-beetle-beater-conc
I end up spraying about every 2 or 3 weeks when the bugs get thicker then I can pick. For what it is worth my grandfather always claimed you could use 1/3 to 1/2 of your own potatoes for seed potatoes and not have a problem but he tended to like to buy clean stock.
That looks like a good size plot to take care of without much in the way of equipment to me.
I wouldn’t complain if you made a video of how that tool works. 
My grandmother told a story about helping her dad with potatoes in 1929. Endless work, and they dealt with potato bugs with a product called Paris green. Wikipedia has an entry, sounds like not a food recommended product, arsenic based. When the stock markets crashed, they earned almost nothing from all that labour.
I have 17 rows 50 yards long, roughly 1/2 mile of rows. If it wasn’t for the wheel hoe it wouldn’t be viable, but I really don’t have very many hours of work in that plot yet, maybe 30 - 40 in total, and maybe 6 - 8 of maintenance work till harvest. It is good exercise. I keep the edges clean with a cultivator. I want to set up a lawn tractor to do row cultivating and hilling, planting.
Bear with me Bill, I will need to bring a videographer along.
I can show you a related idea…
Edit, I don’t care much for the ladies’ presentation… this video is more practical.
And I really like this setup. There’s no reason it couldn’t be built heavier and use 2 or 3 people…
Edit: I’m not too impressed with their attachments, they could be doing more effective work with that rig, and their machine is of fragile construction, but the concept is good - leg power is about 3 times greater than upper body, and the machine action multiplies that efficiency. With power from 2 people it would be a significant machine.
My grandfather would dust arsenic on the potatoes with his tractor with no cab and it would be bad enough that when he drove home the entire main street would be white and he was covered with it as well. No idea why it didn’t kill him maybe only because he didn’t do it but a few years. It is a very slow killer. There was a barrel of it here when I was a small child I found up in the shed and asked my uncle about he freaked and got rid of it right away guess no one realized it was left up there. Nice old wooden barrel too.
You mentioned about your garden getting overwhelmed - I have a suggestion - cardboard mulch. It’s sorta crude, but definitely works. Just find a supply of cardboard behind a big box store, or recycling depot, and cover all the area between rows in cardboard. That’s the end of weed competition. Also conserves moisture. Cardboard can be used like that to convert sod into garden without working the soil too.
Given that recycling cardboard takes more energy than its worth, I
consider this a better use.
Cardboard does work well I did that with a friend before I moved back to the farm you do need to put some dirt back over it to stop the wind from blowing it off. Here I use straw from the hay feeder around about half my garden all the squash tomatoes and peppers it works well around. I didn’t get to it this spring started haying too early and didn’t get back to it. You do have to be a little careful with the mulch it increases some insects which can be hard on root crops and in some cases can cause mold issues. But it works really well in alot of cases.
I find cardboard is most effective, not even the most stubborn plants will grow through it. I hear you about the risk of increasing some pests, here its dryer and hotter, not a real issue. Slugs might like the shelter.
I find after a rain or two, and the growth below dies, the cardboard lays down pretty tight on the ground.
Potatoes and mulch.
Since the kids moved out a few years back, wife and I don’t need a lot of potatoes. A have a few small batches here and there and that’s usually enough. I just thrown them on top of the soil and cover up with grass clippings from lawn moving.
The guy pedaling the bike setup could sure use a little pedal assist from an eBike motor with a 48 volt Lithium Ion battery. My bike has a little control box that allows the rider to select how much assist, from none to full (motorcycle mode).
This Spring we had a multi-family garage sale using my front field. Afterwards, I collected all the empty cardboard boxes and piled them on the ground next to my compost piles. Then I used the front end loader to move the pile over on top of the boxes. Yes, they compost well, and feed the worms. I also liberally threw some buckets of charcoal fines on the boxes. The clear plastic tape is all that will be left, and that will be picked out during the sifting of the compost.
hey Garry, is that the same as Nigerian Quail Grass? Can’t get rid of that stuff…
Funny you are talkng about potatoes. We put up our whole potato harvest today. I think Erika is making MRE mashed potatoes.
And I’ll throw my opinion in here about cardboard mulch. It’s a great way to go. Only draw back is that you will harvest some of the plastic tape in later years, but that’s not a big deal. It will choke out weeds and disappear into the soil. In fact, that’s how we make new ground into garden space.
Mow grass very short, put a layer of hot manure on, cover with 2-5 layers of cardboard, bury with 6-15 inches of sawdust, wood chips, leaves, hay etc. and leave it for several months. In about 7-9 months if will be a thick layer of black dirt “potting soil”. Let the worms do the work.
Garry, there are a few species of grass here that will grow through any amount of cardboard. Not sure where they came from. But mostly it takes care of it.
We have hog weed, dancing weed, pig weed…all the “amaranths” but several years ago I got into a species called Nigerian Quail grass that has been eating my lunch ever since. Plenty of greens to eat if you get it started. Each plant makes about a bazillion little tiny hardy seeds. Every one of those will sprout next year…Hard to get rid of…
As for coming clean on gardens…We harvested most things last week and are prepping for our fall garden now.
And there are a couple of our favorite summer garden pets. They are very spoiled spiders as my oldest son likes to feed them every morning by catching insects int he garden and putting them int he webs.
I don’t like to pull weeds. a black tarp will kill them pretty quickly and the we can plant again without tilling. A little hard on some of the microbes, but they seem to do alright anyway.
I had to look up quail grass. From what I gather it’s celosia. Here it is only a flower bed plant sold in garden centers.
Amaranth is the cultivated varieties of what is commonly called “pigweed”, at least in these parts. The cultivated varieties originated in Mexico and perhaps the southwestern US. Often red or purple coloured leaves, vivid flower clusters, makes a striking accent plant. The seeds can be popped, or ground into a flour.
That is interesting because around here if you have alot of organic matter in the soil the potatoes get scabs. Atleast that is why my uncle tells me is the cause when I get them and I can’t argue I did put alot of organic matter around them…
A 5 gallon pail with holes in the bottom or an old tie both work well. The idea is to fill up as you need to cover the stem similar to hilling and then just dump them out to harvest. A friend of mine does the buckets on a deck and waters them she loves that system.
Billy what you describe with cardboard and building up over it is called sheet mulching in the permaculture books and it works really well like you said you get great soil over even with poor soil under it. Around here the one thing I would add is lime we acid soils still from acid rain. If you have pine trees it is a good sign you need lime. But here in New Hampshire you pretty much can’t go wrong with lime or wood ashes are also great.
