(gentle guitar music) - Hello and a very wet
welcome back to Huws Nursery. I usually say warm but at
the moment it's raining and it's forecast to be
raining for the whole day. However I had to get out in the garden to film this video for you. Because about three days ago, we harvested our second
early potatoes in this bed and we were growing the variety Castrol and we're really pleased with the results. But it's not only the
variety that we chose, we actually trialled a different method of growing potatoes and
we're really pleased with it. It's such an easy and
lazy way of growing them. So I'm going to show you
exactly how you can grow it 'cause luckily, I filmed the whole process from start to finish so you can
see exactly what we've done. So you can do exactly the
same in your vegetable garden. So to begin with, chit some seed potatoes. And this is something you wanna do about four to six weeks before you plant them. Simply put them in eight boxes and once they have started
sprouting from the eyes you then plant them
directly into the soil, but you don't plant them that far. You only push them in a couple of inches which is the same as five centimetres. And it is such a simple technique. There's no need to over complicate it. All you need to do is place
the potatoes into the soil at a spacing of about 30
centimetres to a foot. Now this is the main
part of the experiment. We decided to use a thick layer of hay and place them over the
chitted seed potatoes which we've placed. Note that we haven't even
covered these with soil. Now if you don't have
access to hay or straw, they're really cheap to get in many shops such as garden centres or if you live near an equestrian centre or a farm, I'm sure you can go up
and ask for a free bale, 'cause a bale is all you will need for about a four by six foot section. So make sure you put a generous helping. You can see that it is quite windy here so we do place sticks on this later on, just to stop the hay from blowing away but it'll soon, push
down, and compact down and it won't have a problem. Now after you've done this, before or after, you might want to give it a good soaking. This is because luckily, the
soil that we planted it in was quite moist, however if
you're planting into dry soil, you need to give it a great water. Now, the great thing about mulch and you can see it's poking through here, the young potato plant. The great thing about mulch is that any weeds that do wanna grow, they just can't compete with the mulch. However, the potatoes are
strong enough to grow through. And here before you know it, they grow into really
nice and luscious plants, so it's really good. And then about 12 weeks later, 12 to 14 weeks with second early potatoes. I just uncovered them. You can see how the mulch and the hay has actually decomposed. So it's trying to add and
re-add those nutrients that the potatoes have
taken up into their tubers. And you can see that
simply taking the hay away, we get a load of potatoes. So we're really really pleased
with how well they've done. And you can just see, here's
just some of the potatoes that we managed to harvest from this bed. Now it's critical that
you sort out your potatoes after harvesting them,
into the correct locations. You wanna separate the good potatoes from the bad potatoes. So the bad potatoes
are the ones which have cuts and bruises and these are
more prone to rotting faster. And if you end up putting the bad potatoes into say a sack where
you're storing potatoes during the winter of good ones, then these are more likely to rot faster and then it can have a domino affect. Kind of a chain reaction, causing all your other
potatoes to rot as well which is something you really do not want, especially when you've
put in the hard work. So you need to have a bucket where you put in all the damaged potatoes and these are the potatoes
that you want to eat first. 'Cause you can still eat them, all you need to do is
cut off the bad parts. And for the good potatoes, you want to store them
in a cool and airy place. Preferably around about
15 to 18 degrees celsius and make sure that the sack you use is something which can breathe,
such as a hessian sack. So I hope this video
tutorial has inspired you to try out this different potato
growing method next season. In the meantime, a lot
more has been happening in the garden at the moment. It's basically all systems go. At the moment I am
sheltering from the rain here in the soil tunnel, but the sun is trying to
poke it's way through. Now, when it's raining full blast, (clicks) this is what is sounds like
inside the solar tunnel. (rain spattering) (click) Thank you very much for watching. Once again, I really
hope it did help you out. If you have any further questions, then simply ask me down below
in the comments section. I hope you're having a
fantastic growing season and I'll see you again
next Friday, goodbye.
