You've found the famous Dave's Garden website! Join this friendly global community that shares tips and ideas for home and gardens, along with seeds and plants!
Check out the DG homepage for a brief overview of what you'll find in this gardening mega-site.
Login
If you don't have an account yet, visit the registration page to sign up.
About the potatoes: Do NOT plant any store bought potatoes, because all commercially grown potatoes, including many organic ones, have various viruses, fungi, and 'germs' that you can render your soil useless for many crops permanently. Likewise, it is a good idea to peel any non-organically raised potatoes before cooking them because of the number of poisons used to bring them to market. The difficulty with whole litter, especially big leaves, is that it makes it difficult for water to penetrate to the soil. In fact, a thick layer of leaves can used to keep the ground dry where desired. The best results I have had with 'above the ground' potatoes was with sawdust from a sawmill pile in the woods that had been moldering for 15 years. If you are fortunate enough to find one, keep it a secret, or else it will disapppear as soon as others find out about it.
If you can find any copies, I would highly recommend 'One Straw Gardening', and any and all books by Ruth Stout if you are interested in gardening with little or no dirt 'moving'. Both contain valuable information about 'minimal' gardening and gardening with the least disturbance of the natural process possible.
Sorry, but I think that's way extreme, I rarely use store bought potatoes from seed, they just don't produce at the level I'm looking for. They certainly do NOT poison the ground. You need to rotate potatoes because they are predisposed to fungi. It just goes with the species. Even organically grown seed will get fungi. The key is improving your soil, which happens to be loaded with those fungi, "germs", microbes, you want to have those! Soil is a living thing and if you want good results you need to encourage that with compost, anerobic teas to give it a boost. The more worms the better!
I've read Ruth Stout and have several of her books. I've incorporated a lot of her ideas in my gardening areas. Because I happen to live in a area where I have some "picky" neighbors regular straw gardening is not an option. I'm a big fan of Mother's and have been for many years. I've been gardening organically for over 25 years. I don't use herbicides, pesticides period! I see good changes coming with this "go green" movement. It's the first step in re-educating ourselves about the natural cycle of things. I think as people become more aware, we'll see changes in the use of all these toxic materials in our food chain. If we do that it means you don't get strawberries and melons in January. There is nothing wrong with a blemish on fruit, that sort of thing. People have got to learn to think it out, sometimes I wonder if some of the younger ones are capable of figuring that out and then I get on here and it renews my faith. :)
I am not sure what was extreme. I have been tending vegetable gardens for over 60 years and have seen many schemes come and go. Much depends on the region you are growing in. To elaborate further, I bought potatoes from a reputable organic gardening supplier, and the vines withered. The ag agent told me that they had a virus that came from the supplier, but that it was nearly impossible for them to catch all diseases, so I never informed them of my problem. I have planted grocery store potatoes, and have had a good harvest with no disease problems even though the taters were not 'suitable' for my region (middle Georgia). I also planted some purple all the way through potatoes from the organic foods co-op, and they continued to volunteer for years here and there in my garden. The best results I have had growing potatoes is by pre-sprouting them half buried in a flat of pearlite mixed with vermiculite; put out in the sun, and taken in at night. When they were ready to plant, I removed all the vines except the dominant one and planted the tuber whole in the ground using the traditional hilling up method with good loose garden soil. And in the hillbilly tradition, I have also replanted potatoes as I harvested them; they got a good fall growing in before being bitten by frost; when they recovered early in the spring I had good 'new' potatoes long before any appeared in the local markets. I also had good results planting SEEDS in peat pots before putting the plants in the ground. The problem with above the ground growing schemes, including raised beds, is that they require a lot more water. I have had a number of barren experiments using too much mulch on the surface.
I've had no problems what so ever and I've been using this method for over 20 years. It very may be differences in soil, light and climatic conditions. The harvest is normally large enough I don't want to replant anymore, cause I got plenty. I don't find using raised beds or this method uses more water than any other type of planting.
You should really have taken the time to let that potato grower know you were having a problem with a virus. It would have alerted the grower that they had a serious problem and given them a chance to institute controls.
