Seed Potatoes and How To Plant Potatoes In A Raised Bed

What’s A Seed Potato?

The first time I ever heard someone talking about planting potatoes from seed, I wondered to myself, “Where are the seeds in potatoes? I've never seen seeds.” I was completely serious. I can laugh at myself now, knowing what I know, but for those who are starting out where I started out (completely naive), let me fill you in.

Everyone remembers seeing this in your potatoes.  They are now seed potatoes.

This, my friends, is a “seed potato”– otherwise known as an old, sprouting potato spud. Once planted, those sprouts will grow into beautiful green plants, and the developing roots will form brand new potato tubers in the ground below. Sometimes when you buy seed potatoes they may not be sprouting yet. That’s okay. The sprout will grow at the “eye” of the potato over time, whether left in a pantry or buried in the garden.

Although potato plants do bloom and go to seed if you leave them long enough, potatoes are not typically planted from these seeds. Most people plant potatoes from sprouting spuds, however you can collect the seeds from a mature potato plant and grow more plants from true seed. I have to warn you though, potato genetics are funny, and most of the time you never know what kind of potato you’ll end up harvesting when planted from true seed. It is likely it will not be the same kind of potato you originally planted. Might be a fun thing to experiment with though!

My seed potatoes are potatoes that are leftover from last year’s harvest. They've been sitting in a crate in my kitchen since last Fall. They shriveled before we could get to them, so I let them sit and sprout, waiting to be re-purposed in this year’s garden. Every now and then I sorted through them and removed any rotten potatoes. There weren't many, but a few.

colorful seed potatoes

I love growing colored potatoes alongside our white ones. These purple and red potatoes have gorgeous sprouts, don’t they?

Potatoes In A Raised Bed
Over the years I've tried many different ways of planting potatoes. I've tried planting in post holes, traditional mounds, trash cans, using the “no dig” method, planting in tubs… all of which had pretty dismal results. Planting in raised beds has by far provided the most abundant crops. We harvested over 100 lbs of potatoes last year from two 5′ x 15′ raised beds! I’ll definitely continue planting in raised beds from now on.

Here’s how to plant potatoes in raised beds. You’ll love how easy it is…

First, dig a long trench for your potatoes to be buried in. I use a hoe and dig down as deep as I can to the hard soil at the bottom of the raised bed, about a foot deep. You want to at least be able to cover your potatoes completely with soil. Space the rows about 18″ apart.

If you have a limited supply of seed potatoes, you can cut them into quarters or halves, making sure each chunk of the potato has a sprout or eye on it- otherwise it won’t grow a plant. If you plan on cutting your potatoes, give them a couple of days to “cure” so the cut side can dry up. Curing reduces the chances that your seed potato gets a disease.

planting potatoes

I don’t cut my seed potatoes anymore because I have more than enough to plant our beds using whole potatoes. When you put the sprouting potato in the ground, make sure the sprouts are facing up. Space each seed about a foot apart in rows.

planting potatoes raised bed mulch

Once the rows are filled, cover the potatoes with dirt and mulch heavily with straw, grass clippings, pine needles, or crumbled leaves. As the plants grow, add more soil or mulch to cover almost all of the plant to encourage more tubers to develop along the root system.

Reprinted from new life on a homestead

How to Build a Raised Garden Bed

By far not a definitive instruction set to build raised beds but hopefully it will tickle your imagination to start this weekend to build one.  Don't limit yourself and say just because you do not have room to garden that a raised bed won't work.  It can be 2x2, 3x3, or 3x20, you decided and be creative.

Raised garden beds are exactly what their name promises – they are beds in which you can plant

vegetables where the planting medium has been raised higher than the surrounding land. Raised beds have many benefits for the permaculture gardener. They prevent the soil becoming compacted, which in turn helps with water drainage and soil aeration. The containment of the soil by the raised bed also helps to prevent erosion by wind and rain, while the improved structure of the soil means that it is typically slightly warmer than the surrounding earth, meaning you can usually plant in raised beds earlier in the season. Having such well-structured and healthy soil also means that raised beds can typically support more individual plants that ground-level beds, so making them amenable to the permaculture principle of maximizing yield wherever possible. And it must not be forgotten that raising your garden beds makes tended, maintaining and harvesting from them, easier on the gardener, involving less bending. Thus, they are particularly valuable for older gardeners or those with restricted mobility.

You can purchase pre-fabricated raised garden beds, but they are fairly easy to construct yourself, and they can easily be made from recycled materials.

Position
You can place your raised garden bed on any surface. If placing on soil, you will need to do less work, as you will leave the bottom open for the plant roots to penetrate the soil.

However, you can also install it on grass or even concrete, as you can add layers of mulch material at the bottom to contain the growing medium. As with your normal garden beds used for cultivating food crops, you will want to position your raised beds so that they get several hours of full sun each day – to help the plants set fruit – and protected from string winds that could damage the plants or erode the soil.

Size
The size of your raised bed is likely to depend upon the materials you are able to salvage to construct it. However, it is worth remembering that, given that the garden bed will predominantly, if not entirely, be given over to plants that produce an edible yield, you want to make sure that you can reach all parts of the bed for harvesting your crops. A width of four feet is a good general rule to enable you to reach all parts of the bed, and the length can be as long as you need for your planting design. In terms of height, just remember that the higher you build your beds, the more growing medium will be needed to fill them, and tall beds can experience a lot of pressure from the material contained within, so you may need to reinforce the walls of your raised bed if building it over around two feet.

Materials
Recycled lumber is ideal for making a raised garden bed. You can buy timber, but it is a lot more expensive and much less ‘green’. Cedar is a good choice if you can source it, as it is naturally rot resistant. Whichever lumber you source, make sure that it is untreated and not painted so you are not introducing chemicals or heavy metals into your permaculture plot. You will need boards for each of the four sides of your bed, extra ones if you want to add more height, and some stakes for each of the four corners to attach the side boards to.

Construct
Construct your bed in the location where it will sit; this is a lot easier than building it elsewhere and having to move it. Screw or nail the wall boards to the four corner stakes. It is also a good idea, if you have the extra lumber, to add stakes at the middle point of the outside walls, to strengthen them. If you have long beds, add a stake every four feet or so, to help the bed contain the material within.

Fill
If your bed is over grass or concrete, add a thick layer of newspaper or cardboard, with the edges of the sheets overlapping so no gaps are left. Water this layer well before proceeding. This layer will keep weeds suppressed if on grass, and provide a base level of nutrients for the raised bed. If siting over earth, make sure the area is clear of weeds before filling (you can also add the cardboard layer, but leaving the bar earth available will encourage deep root growth). Fill the bed with good quality topsoil. Augment the soil with lots of organic matter, such as compost, composted manure, grass cuttings and leaf litter. You might also want to round your growing medium, piling it higher in the middle so it slopes to the edges, rather than having a flat bed. Rounding the soil increases the surface area, allowing you to grow more plants in the space.

Plant
Once your raised garden bed is filled, it is a good idea to plant it as soon as possible. Nature hates bare earth, and weed species will quickly raised garden bed colonize any. And at the very least bare earth is prone to erosion by wind and rain. Plant seedlings rather than seeds for the same reason. Use planting guilds and inter-planting to maximize the specimens that can be fitted into the bed, and so to maximize yield. You can also use planting to ameliorate conditions that you bed may experience due to its location. So, for instance, you can plant taller crops on the side that receives the most wind or, if in a very hot location, in a position that affords shade to smaller, more fragile plants. Water the seedlings well when they are first planted in the bed. If your plants require it, feel free to mulch the raised bed, although you are unlikely to need mulch for moisture retention, as the soil in the bed is adapted to do so. However, as with normal beds keep an eye on the dampness of the soil, and if it becomes too dry, water well.

4 Ways to Preserve Fruits and Vegetables

An urban garden design seeks to maximize the yield of food that grows in it. By promoting biodiversity, succession planting, stacking systems and the efficiency of use of space, a permaculture plot should be able, space permitting, provide a large proportion of the gardener’s required fruit, vegetables and herbs. And by treating the plants and soil with respect, making sure that there is a lot of organic matter in the soil so that plants can attain all the nutrients they need, the gardener should cultivate strong, healthy plants that give a large edible harvest.

One of the most appealing things about growing your own food is that you can go from earth to table in the minimum amount of time, ensuring your fruits and vegetables are at their freshest and most nutritious. But sometimes your productive plot will produce more harvest than you can eat fresh.

This abundance is not simply to be left to wither on the branch or rot on the ground. There are several options that the urban gardener can employ to utilize the extra food.

It could provide an opportunity to exchange with other local food growers. Often, particularly in urban areas where plots are typically smaller, neighbors will grow different types of vegetables and fruits. Swapping allows each to make use of their abundant crops and increase the range of their diet. A good harvest could also give the gardener a means to earn income, selling at farmer’s markets, for example.

However, another option, which involves keeping the produce onsite, is to preserve the fruit and vegetables that you do not eat at the time of harvest. This allows you not only to have those foodstuffs available even when they are not in season; it allows you to experiment with different ways of treating and eating your produce. Here are the primary ways of preserving fruit and vegetables.

Canning
Canning involves placing fruit and vegetables in airtight containers, typically glass jars, and so prevent bacteria getting to them. Canned good can be stored on shelves for years, if required. There are two methods, although one requires a specialist machine so may not be practical or cost-efficient for many people. This is the pressure canning method, which enables you to achieve temperatures above boiling point that foods with low acidity require to effectively neutralize the threat of the botulism bacteria remaining active. It requires a pressure canning machine and is the method used to can most vegetables, as they are low in acid. Fruit, being high in acid, does not have the threat of botulism, so can be canned using a simpler method. Just place your fruit in the jar, top with boiling water, leaving an inch or so of space at the top of the jar (to allow space for the fruit to expand), run a spatula around the inside edge to remove any air bubbles, then close with a threaded lid.

Whichever method you use, the jars must be sterilized before being filled. You can do this either by using sterilizing tablets such as those used for babies’ bottles, or by placing the jars (and their lids) in an oven on a low temperature for half and hour or so in order to kill all the bacteria.

Salting
One of the oldest methods of preserving food, salting can be used for meat and fish, as well as sliced vegetables. There are two methods. The first uses a low salt to vegetable ratio (between two and five percent salt per weight of vegetables). This level of salting promotes the growth of the lactic acid bacteria, which in turn inhibits the growth of other bacterial forms that could spoil the food. It also serves to slightly pickle the vegetables. The second method uses a higher percentage of salt (between twenty and twenty-five percent), preserving the freshness of the produce but adding a salty flavor when used, even after the salt has been washed off. Whichever method of salting you use, you need to store the produce in the refrigerator.

Drying
Drying dehydrates the fruit or vegetables, removing all the water along with the bacteria, yeasts and mold that live in the moisture. Besides altering the texture of the food, drying also modifies the taste, typically concentrating it. Dried food has the added benefit of being safe to store as is on your pantry shelf – you don’t need special packaging to keep it in or to keep it in the refrigerator. In some countries solar drying of food is a part of life, and if you live in an area that receives high levels of consistent sunshine, you may be able to dry food that way. More likely however, is drying in an oven. The technique requires low temperature and good air circulation so use the lowest setting and prop the oven door open – this allows the air that the moisture has evaporated into to escape.

Freezing
Freezing fruit and vegetables soon after they are picked serves to ‘lock in’ the flavor and freshness of the produce. Freezing and then ways to preserve fruit
thawing a vegetable or fruit is the preserving method that will have an end product that most closely resembles the taste of fresh food. You effectively place the food in suspended animation in whatever condition it is in when you freeze it, so always freeze ripe produce, and avoid spoiled specimens. You can freeze the produce in wax-coated cardboard containers, in plastic boxes or jars made with very thick glass. It is recommended that you blanch vegetables you are going to freeze in boiling water for a minute or so beforehand – this limits the activity of enzymes that may spoil the produce if stored over a long time. You need a temperature below freezing point for effective long-term storage, so use the freezer compartment in your refrigerator for food that you will use within a month, as temperatures in these rarely get down to the requisite zero degrees. When thawing food, leave at room temperature until completely thawed, rather than trying to thaw in the oven.

10 Easy Steps to Your Own Worm Farm

Worms are definitely on the side of the permaculturist when it comes to benefit to the garden. They are one of the most effective methods of conditioning the soil. Worms break up the soil structure, allowing it to become aerated and allowing moisture to percolate down into it. This “loosening” of the soil also enables plant roots to penetrate deeper into the soil, bringing nutrients up towards the surface.

Worms also break down organic matter, releasing nutrients into the soil from where they can be used by plants. As they eat their way through organic matter, they produce castings, which are a natural nutrient-rich form of compost, that is an ideal addition to your garden beds.

Instituting a worm farm on your permaculture plot ensures a consistent supply of castings, helping your soil stay in top condition year round. Creating a worm farm, in which the animals breed, mature and process material is easy and can be done in just a few steps.

Find Containers
You need a container that can drain to keep your worm farm in. While there are specially made worm farm containers on the market, you can just as easily use recycled materials – which is better for the environment and your pocket. A series of stackable containers, such as old wooden boxes, used plastic crates or Styrofoam containers are ideal – with the worms living in the top containers, and the bottom serving as a repository for drainage – but some enterprising gardeners also use old bathtubs.

Whatever you choose for your container it needs to be watertight and able to protect your worms from extremes of heat of cold. Poke some holes in the top container and cover with shade cloth so that the worms don’t fall through them.

Site Your Farm
Decide where you will put your worm farm on your plot. For the worms it needs to be in a position that does not get too hot or too cold, particularly avoiding locations that are prone to frost. Under a shady deciduous tree would be ideal, as the tree losing its leaves in the winter allows sunshine to reach and warm the farm. You will also want to place your farm somewhere so that it is energy efficient for you to remove the worm castings and place on your beds. Look at a central position in zone 1 of your plot.

Add Bedding
The worms in your farm need material in which to live. Typically, it will include some shredded newspaper mixed with some compost and a little garden soil. Other options include mushroom compost, grass clippings and coconut fibers. You want to provide a good depth of material for the worms to live in, so half fill your top container. Water the bedding material so that it is just moist.

Add Worms

Unfortunately, you can’t simply take earthworms from the garden and put them in the worm farm – leave them in the soil to help improve the structure. You need species for your farm that are adept at composting. You should be able to source from an organic supplier, either locally or online. There are several species from which to choose. Tiger worms are one option, while Red Wrigglers are another. If you are in a warm climate, Indian Blues are a good choice, as they do not cope well with the cold.

Add Food
The worms in your farm will eat a wide variety of organic matter. Indeed, they will eat most of the things that would typically go into a compost pile. So you can feed the worms fruit and vegetables scraps, shredded newspaper, old mulch, coffee grinds, leaf litter and garden prunings. Dried eggshells make a good addition as the calcium they contain prompts the worms to lay more eggs.

Cover
It is a good idea to add another layer of shade cloth or a few sheets of damp newspaper over the top of your worm bedding, once the creatures and food have been added. This helps prevent vinegar flies and maggots getting to the worms. Place the lid on your top container to protect the worms from the elements.

Maintain
To keep your worm farm functioning efficiently, you need to ensure that the bedding remains moist and the worms have enough fresh food. You will need to let the worm population guide you as to how much organic matter to add. If you find that some food is staying around and going moldy, you are giving them too much. However, generally, worm populations will respond to available food supplies and breed accordingly. It is also a good idea to add a handful of garden soil to the farm every so often, as the sand and grit in the soil helps the worms grind up their food.

Migrate Worms
As you worms multiply and the castings they create build up, you can migrate them up into the top container of your composting garden wormsworm farm so you can harvest the castings. When the middle container is almost full of castings, place some bedding in the top container (having remembered to create drainage holes and covering them with shade cloth). The worms will migrate up to the new bedding. When they have migrated you can simply remove the middle box, harvest the castings and use this container to migrate the worms again when needed.

Use the Drained Liquid
The bottom container will collect liquid that drains from the worm farm. This is waste from the worms but it is not useless. Dilute the liquid with water until it is the colour of weak tea and then use as a liquid compost on your garden beds. Keep a check on the level of the liquid in the bottom container, as you don’t want it to get so high that it seeps back into the worm’s bedding.

Use the Castings
The castings act as a great slow-release compost for your garden beds and potted plants. Adding them to the soil will also prompt microorganisms already there to become more active and process the castings into the soil, making their nutrients available to your plants.

Reprinted from Open Permaculture.com

Transplanting plugs into larger containers

If you're like me sometimes those starter trays just are not deep enough to start seeds in.  Plants often get leggy or just die off, then when you dump it out you find a mass of roots in the cell.

Here is what we do before we loose plants or before they become a leggy tangled mess.

In this photo we see how uneven the growth is.  Actually the tallest plants were Rutgers Heirloom Tomatoes, then the Bush Big Boy, all which won't be in the ground for another month.  The far left  are standard Roma's that were still in their seed leaf stage (Cotyledon).  Herbs, cabbage, celery and habaneros on the far right.  Other than the habaneros and celery all have gotten leggy but are on their mature leaves.  But it is not to late to save them.

• First thing you need to do is make sure the cells are relatively dry, wet ones break apart easily and are difficult remove without damaging the root systems.

• Locate a thin piece of wood, a popsicle stick, or a 1/2 pvc pipe cut at an angle at one end to make a spade.  I prefer the piece of wood as shown below.

• Solo cups, yogurt containers or even tin/aluminum sauce or vegetable cans.  Collect them, reuse them.  They work great, just poke a few holes in the bottom for drainage.  For this case I am using solo cups.

• Good potting soil, make sure it is not starter soil.  I make sure it has vermiculite in it.  What I normally do is save it from year to year, but I normally cut it in half and add compost from my worm bin, finely sifted.  Make sure before you use it in the container your are transplanting to that the mix is moist, it is easier to work with and will keep it from floating out and over the sides of your container.

Take the stick and slip it into one of the cells that you want to transplant.  Press against one of the sides and slide down till it hits the bottom.

Gently pry the soil plug out of the cell.  Remember not pull the seedlings by the stalk base.  They can easily be crushed and then they will die.  Grab by the plug or gently by the Cotyledon as long as there are primary leaves present.

With the plug remove just set it aside.  Take one of the solo cups and fill with enough soil mixture so that the plant will be buried at least 1/2 the way

Take the plug and place in the cup and fill the remaining cup gently packing the dirt around the stems so as not to crush them.

Be sure to label the cup so you know what is planted in it.  Add a small amount of water.  Just make sure not to over saturate. Once done go ahead and move the cups to their new location in a greenhouse or under grow lights till ready to plant.

Take the seed tray with the seedlings that aren't ready and put back were it can get some more grow time.  Be sure to adjust lighting to maximize leaf growth, typically 1/2 inch above the plant if using fluorescent or 3 inches if using daylight CFL's.

Willows the rooting miracle!

If you put cuttings from other plants in with the pussy willows that are rooting, the other plants are likely to root faster due to the presence of the rooting hormone, indolebutyric acid (IBA) is found in all willows.

Make your own willow water:
Easily root azaleas, lilacs, summersweets and roses by gathering about two cups of pencil-thin willow branches cut to 1-3 inch lengths. Steep twigs in a half-gallon of boiling water overnight. Refrigerated liquid kept in a jar with a tight-fitting lid will remain effective up to two months. (Label jar so you won’t confuse it with your homemade moonshine.) Overnight, soak cuttings you wish to root. Or water soil into which you have planted your cuttings with the willow water. Two applications should be sufficient. Some cuttings root directly in a jar of willow water. Make a fresh batch for each use. You can also use lukewarm water and let twigs soak for 24-48 hours.

Who is TUFI?

We want to thank all that attended the Meet and Greet and also need to apologize. It appears that when the event was scheduled the announcement only went to about 19 people, of the 215 members. Not sure as to why that happened.

One of the key points that came out of the meet and greet is that TUFI though a group of food enthusiast, gardeners, farmers and community it is really you. We are here to foster the sustainable food movement and community development through urban farming and gardening. We are here to help each other and help others become part of the movement. TUFI is as big or small as the individual wants it to be. Whether you want to learn how to garden on your property, porch or balcony or working to establish a viable urban farm, that is up to you and we are here to help.

This also does not limit to just produce, but include mushroom farming, food as medicine, foraging, micro-livestock, bee keeping, flowers, habitat restoration whatever your goal.

What we are trying to arrange is a fruit or nut tree planting although we need donations of tree stocks. What you can look for is donations of damaged trees that a nursery might be willing to donate, even if we only get five or ten that would be great. If for some reason we do not acquire some tree stock then we will be doing a class on generating peach, apple and nectarine trees from seeds. A few of us already have or will have greenhouses shortly we can winter over the saplings we generate and plan on a 2016 Tree Blitz. Think of it this way, we have 216 members currently and if each one of us do just one apple tree we could plant a full public orchard. That would be a major accomplishment from a small effort and really carries our message of "One seed, one hand, one community".

Always looking for you input you can always post to the page or send us an email at TroyUFI@gmail.com and of course keep spreading the word on Troy Urban Farming Initiative and lets keep generating roots in Troy!

-John

Join us for our kick off meet and greet!

Interested in sustainable farming? Redefining what farming is? What about urban farming. Want to put vacant lots to work?

Want to be on the board, a worker, a planner or an organizer?  Maybe you want to become part of a co-op and start your own urban farm for your family, neighborhood or community.  Join us Monday April 6th at 6:30 pm. for an informal get together and brainstorming session.  Find out about the concept and how you can help and be part of the sustainable urban agriculture movement.

TUFI is happening, are you going to be part of it?

Location:
Cornerstone Community Church of Lansingburgh, NY
570 3rd Ave, Troy, New York 12182