Granny Gardens: Straw Bed Potatoes!

 

Such a surprise today to gently reach under the 6-inch layer of straw in our garden planter box and pull out a perfectly-shaped, flawless little potato!

How did that happen?

In the Spring when we were getting ready to plant our veggie garden, I brought out a plastic bag with 4 eye-laden spuds in it. Could we plant these? I asked my dear husband.  

The punky potatoes in the bag were organic Yukon Golds that we would have eaten, had they not so quickly sprung eyes.  Besides being full of little white googlies, they were also a bit wizened up, not at all attractive as a possible dinner item.

We thought about the idea for a couple of minutes and asked ourselves: What if the potatoes whack out and go really deep and have to be dug-- somehow-- out of the planter boxes? That could be an awkward and disabling experience for two old folks like us.

So, back to the drawing board (in this case, the Internet), went I. I soon came across a youtube, about someone who had planted potatoes on the top of the soil and covered them with six inches of clean (no seeds) straw. For that person, they grew, wonderfully.

I made my case for the straw. I have a friend who had once done an entire straw bale garden, back when that was trendy. I messaged her to ask how that had gone. To date, she has not replied.

I suggested we could also use the straw for other sorts of garden work... like as mulch around the cucumbers and plants with fruits that needed a clean bed to grow in. 

So, Ed went off and came home with a giant golden bale of straw. The straw was very esthetically-pleasing. I planted, equidistant,  9 eyed-pieces of potato in the planter box and then Ed carefully covered it with six inches of golden straw. I was reminded of a fairytale (was it Rumpelstiltskin?) where a princess is forced to spin straw into real gold each day. It was quite lovely to look at-- light-catching gold, clean, fairly cheap ($12) and we only used about 1/4 of the bale, if that, so there was lots left for other mulching tasks.

WAS THERE ENOUGH STRAW TO KEEP POTATOES FROM POKING UP AND THROUGH? 

I was worried that the spuds would do what growing potatoes often do, and that is rise up before they are 'hilled' fully, and become exposed, and turn green, and therefore poisonous (in my opinion).  Potatoes are nightshades and produce the toxin solanine-- when the skin and sprouts are exposed to light the glycoalkaloids can accumulate and cause a human health concern. Six inches of beautiful golden covering didn't seem likely to keep those little spudders down.

Nevertheless, we were going to be trusting of the guy on the youtube and just go ahead with this in faith.

By and by, the plants sprouted and there were absolutely no indications that there were gaps between the plant and the soil. In places where I was worried that things were thinning out, I put in some extra straw.

The plants didn't look very healthy-- light green color vs. the dark green plants that I recalled from my parents' potato patches. A couple of the plants seemed to get waterlogged (or something) and flopped over, dead. We had a lot of rain in May and it seemed to me that our 'experiment' was a mushy-looking failure.

Then it dried up and the plants got bigger. They stayed that light green, slightly anemic-looking shade. A couple dried up and fell over the side of the planter.

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KNOW ABOUT THE SOURCE OF THE STRAW BEFORE PURCHASING

CAUTION: Purchase only unsprayed straw-- straw from crops that have been sprayed with herbicides and fungacides will wreck your vegetable gardens. Before buying straw, make sure it is from a spray-free source, a  "certified organic" source would offer the greatest assurance. If you bought  it already and are not sure, do this test:

Sow a flat of legumes (beans)

In a 5 gallon pail, mix the straw you have and water and let it sit for a couple of days.

Water the flat with your straw bale water while the beans grow.  Keep an eye on the bean plants. They generally develop quite quickly and if the second and third sets of leaves are okay, generally the straw will be okay to use as compost, and a growing medium.

Highly recommended to find a good source of ORGANIC straw bales-- from a local organic hay grower, if possible. If you wait until the year following the year they baled (when they have their new crop to deal with) you will generally get a good deal on the year-old bales. But if you are only buying a couple of bales to use as mulch, buy them new and you will be happy with the results. 

Also, I read that farm animal manure in straw can also be a toxic source of chemicals for your new garden. Look for ways to fertilize that are less apt to have toxicity, like worm castings and compost teas, etc.

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AWAITING THE BABY SPUDS...

I looked forward to maybe seeing if there were some baby potatoes. But my training was that you waited for the plants to flower, and then die, and THEN you can dig up the spuds. The flowering never happened.

I got caught up in lots of other garden jobs and just decided 'what will be will be. I fully expected that this would be a "learning" and that we would go ahead and compost what we decided was useful-- probably the straw, maybe the corpses of the plants. 

And then, today, I was walking past the planter box and just slipped my hand in, and out came an oval, egg-sized POTATO-- perfectly clean and unblemished. A new potato!  A 'first fruit', much loved in my childhood. 

I showed it to Ed.

We marveled.

Then we went out and tried the plant that the baby spud had come from. Around it, disconnected from any mother, were a few little potatoes, and one decent-size one. I pulled up the plant and unearthed several more. Lovely little creatures.

We ate them boiled for lunch with steamed new beans, a salad, and just a tad (well, maybe more than a tad) of "vegan butter". They were exquisite. Nothing like them~

HOW TO GROW POTATOES FROM SEEDS (NOT FROM SEED POTATOES)

WHAT ARE UNTREATED SEEDS? GOOD OR BAD FOR GROWING?