Growing Potatoes in Woodchip Mulch Raised Garden Bed

get a mark from self-sufficient me and we're down the back of the veggie garden today in my sort of mongrel area it's a really hot it's not that humid but it's hot and dry it's got a dry wind blowing through site there doesn't play too much havoc with the Mike the back end of the garden we've got my compost heap couple of banana trees like I'm a newer pile that I've covered over and these three beds plus a trellis here that I sometimes use but this area here are generally useful sort of ad hoc stuff like I'll leave sweet potato roam free I grow some Roselle --is down the back here which is the large Rosella plants my compost pile like I said even got the odd you know thing that goes to seed like mustard and got a carrot here a purple carrot let's just come up like this really going to compost heap doesn't grow too well in when you don't really plan for it but what I did plan to do was grow some potatoes through winter in this bed here I use 3/4 of the bed for potatoes and I've used the last quarter for some onion and garlic but what I want to talk about today is harvesting these potatoes in this bed so I'll bring you in a little bit closer and we'll have more of a chat about and then we'll get into harvesting and see what we've got out of it but before we ever chat about the harvesting let's go back in time and I'll show you what I planted there the Kip Fleur and the other ones are the Royal Blues I hadn't planted either of these ever before so I was keen to have a garden they're only a 1 kilogram bag each of seed potatoes which means they're certified seed so that they're not going to have any diseases so I just spread them apart about 30 to 40 centimeters each potato I don't have any real exact measurements that's all I do and as you can see I've planted them also in this mulch bed of chip wood chip now this is this is really thick wood chip I'd say good six inches of wood chip on top of this bed from stuff that hide most up myself and I wanted all you nails clean to see how it would go I've had success slightly with growing in wood chip with other crops I thought maybe the potatoes would go well and so I dig a hole about six to twelve inches through this mulch into the soil and then plumped the potato in and then I just left it grow and that's about it and about the only other tip I'd give at this stage is not to overwater them until you see the first sort of shoots coming through and then let's find the water about once a week over watering can cause potatoes to rot well I know this wind is going to play havoc with my bike but I'll just have to push through if that's okay with you guys so as you can see here's the potato bed in front of me and you can see some plants growing here now a few weeks ago there was nothing the potatoes that are planted like four months ago in winter they had died back and was pretty much like this bed here there was nothing it was completely bare and there was some dry plants on top which I removed along with some weeds here's another weed here but I've just pulled out and it was a pretty well a dry bed so I've been meaning to dig in here and harvest this out in the meantime unfortunately some of the potatoes obviously have re sprouted and coming through which is a bit disappointing for me because I was I didn't want that to happen but in a subtropical climate you know you can tip you can grow potatoes basically all year but they don't grow great through summer so they will start growing and sprout like this and not grow great and in the middle of summer which just at the start of summer now we're actually still in spring but just about to hit the cricket season and the hot summers once the summer hits here all these will suffer and probably die back I mean sometimes you can go alright some potato varieties will grow well through a subtropical summer like this but generally they don't so I didn't want this to happen I should have harvested these earlier but anyway we'll see so what I'm going to do now is harvest them all see if I can salvage some of these sprouted potato plants and replant them in say a third of the bed and see how much we've got here's the first one purple starting to sprout but yeah eating a little bit by something looks like some type of cat occur or something got into it maybe a slug but that's still quite edible give you guys a closer look as we go nice sliced potato that one and we want them nice little look at this beautiful worms this this thick mouse really helps that one's alright that one's not starting to sprout I'm actually getting potatoes off these new plants and they've only been grown for a few weeks it looked fairly very young and new but I'm actually getting some good potatoes often and likes we wonder if I shouldn't have just left them in there and cut my losses all right so here we go there's the harvest quite frankly I reckon at least half or more have been spoiled because they've started to reshoot again it's still not bad it's still a good em you know couple of kilos or three or four kilos of potatoes at least year maybe five kilos of potatoes fine they're going to taste delicious but really I left it go too long that's my error but it's not all lost let's see if I can't get a summer crop the soils really good here I'll throw in some extra fertilizer a bit of blood and bone and I'll replant all these ones that have half eaten by worms and have started to shoot already and gone light and no good to eat I'll replant all of them most back over the bed and let's see if we can't get maybe a summer crop of potatoes it's quite possible that we could get you know a good crop of young potatoes the plants might grow okay for you know a month or so and then die off rather quickly in the heat but we can only try it you know sometimes the potatoes will go dormant through the middle of summer and then start coming up again in winter that happens as well so it's not all lost but I'd say the overall lesson that I've got is when they have died back the potatoes harvest immediately in this climate don't let them sit in the soil otherwise at this time of year they quite possibly will reshoot and ruin your crop ok let's smooth this bed out a bit first just evenly smooth it out we can see lots of potatoes will scatter throughout the bed here smooth it out yep it'll do and now I'm going to grab all those potatoes from my garlic patch and I'm going to plant them willy-nilly I'm not going to be too careful just going to dig a hole throw em in and even these plants here see how we go dig them real deep throw them in hopefully they'll survive give them enough water radio so there's the Kepler and the royal blue which more looks more like a purple to me washed and harvest it yeah a little bit disappointing but you know it's not an overall disaster is it there's still a good 5 kilos or so of potatoes here for us to enjoy and it's likely that I will get another harvest out of those potatoes that I've replanted we'll see how that goes I'll keep you guys updated on on how that bit actually does go as the woodchip made a big difference in my opinion maybe in locking in the moisture I think the thick mulch did help to lock the moisture in I from past potato harvests I haven't seen like extra growth or anything just because I've used wood chip I thought the plants grew very healthily through the season they look nice and green I expected though I was going to get a fairly good harvest I was quite excited about the harvest until they re sprouted then I was concerned and for a good reason because I lost I lost half my harvest if I didn't leave it respray out I probably would have ended up with a really excellent harvest out of that wood chip bed and so yeah I suppose compared to some of the other harvests I've had in growing them in not wood chip I suppose wood chip did help I can see by digging in that soil there that the moisture was was still good the soil was nice and black at yeah it seemed like an enriched bed even though it's just had a big crop of potatoes wood chips certainly doesn't hurt as a mulch for potato bed so I would give that a thumbs up anyway I hope you enjoyed that video not all gardening goes to plan in fact I'd say 50 percent doesn't but that is gardening for you sometimes you have a great crop you don't know why sometimes you have a great crop and you do know why sometimes you have a bad crop and you think I've done everything right what's happened you know that is Cardinal for you I'm afraid and that's what sort of makes a fun - it's the unpredictability of what am I going to get you know growing new things and different types of potatoes that I haven't grown before now that's exciting anyway thanks a lot for watching I hope that wind hasn't played too much of a havoc with the mic but anyway that's what you get in a hot windy day in subtropical Queensland don't forget to check out the website itself the vision me calm bye for now you

Channel: Self Sufficient Me

Views: 247,263

Rating: 4.9003558 out of 5

Keywords: Self-sufficiency, prepper, prepping, homesteading, food gardening, growing potatoes, growing potatoes in woodchip, woodchip in garden, using woodchip, how to grow potatoes

Id: QaHwivdo0Rg

Length: 12min 16sec (736 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 26 2016