We THOUGHT We Were Prepared...But We WEREN'T!

hey everybody welcome back to limit ruins homestead well there are some crazy things going on in the world right now not only with this coronavirus that is going around but with the weather as well I don't know if you guys are having crazy weather where you're at but here where we live things have just been crazy since the beginning of the year one of the challenges that we are having with the weather we've talked with a couple of times is just the sheer volume of rain we've had since the beginning of the year we've had about 15 inches of rain maybe more because of right about 16 inches now and so that is starting to affect us we talked about in one of our previous videos that were afraid that if things don't dry out pretty soon we're not gonna be able to plant in the ground one of the things that we realized pretty quickly when things started to disappear out of the stores is that there's one area of food that we are not very well prepared on and that is potatoes we've shared with you guys in the past that potatoes are something we've struggled with growing and we were gonna try a few different things this year just kind of as an experiment but now because they're actually gone out of the stores and in fact we normally order organic potatoes through as your standard and we had an order placed for them and just found out a couple days ago that they're not going to be able to supply them it's kind of making us freaked out and we're realizing that instead of just doing some experimental things this year with potatoes we really need to try to grow a lot of potatoes this year and we're hoping that what we're going to work on today is going to be the solution for us [Music] well you probably figured it out by now but we are going to be building today a big raised bed garden for planting potatoes in our native soil here is pretty much all clay and with the amount of rain that we've been getting this winter first of all it's way too wet to even plant anything right now especially potatoes but they need to get in the ground right now if we were to put them in they would most likely just rot before they even started to grow the other problem is because our soil is so hard here that by the end of summer when it's time to actually dig the potatoes up it's almost like digging them out of concrete which makes it so incredibly difficult to dig up the potatoes so Kevin and I have decided that this area right next to our newest greenhouse will be the perfect place to have a raised bed garden for potatoes this spring and early summer we've been looking at this spot for months and we've been talking about all kinds of different things to use this area for so the need is here the need is immediate for us so we're going to build a 4-foot by 24 foot raised bed garden for the potatoes now we're putting down this woven weed fabric as you can see because one of the main issues we've had with raised beds here in the past is weeds growing up from the ground through the raised bed garden and really just making a mess of our raised beds so we're we're using this barrier here now the wrote the woven weed fabric is porous its woven fabric which allows the moisture to go through so it's not like just having black plastic here right it will allow for good drainage we went yesterday and picked up another load of that really nice organic compost that we bought for inside the greenhouse which will stay nice and loose and we'll make harvesting the potatoes a lot easier so we're going to get busy building this we're going to again it's going to be four feet by 24 feet we're gonna try to get this all built filled up with compost and planted with potatoes today if we can because tonight we're actually supposed to get more rain yesterday barely made it into the low 50s today it's supposed to be 82 degrees and by the weekend we're supposed to be back down into the 50s so just crazy weather we need to take full advantage of warm dry days as we get them we need to get to work we're gonna bring you along we're going to start laying the boards out for the raised bed now we've made a decision not to center the raised bed on the greenhouse we're actually going to build it even with the other end of the greenhouse and that will leave us an extra 8 feet of space up here so it can move so that we can move some of our big pots from inside the greenhouse out here and have some extra room for them outside so again the this is going to be 24 feet long the greenhouse is 32 feet so we'll have a nice section up here to move several of our big pots though [Music] [Applause] [Music] we are dealing with some uneven ground here we did a little bit of leveling more like smoothing out this area but we just don't have time for perfection right now we're just going to make do with with whatever ends up happening happens because we just need to get this project done we need to get our potatoes planted [Music] we found that in down [Music] all right we've got the basic frame of the raised bed built nothing fancy at all now again because we're working on kind of a piece of ground that goes like this I just did a step down right here and it just won't be a big deal potatoes aren't gonna care if this raised bed is perfectly level or not I guaranteed it so I'm still going to reinforce the corners with some pieces of 2x4 just so those are good and strong and probably put a couple stakes along the edges to hold everything kind of square and then it's time to start filling this up with that great organic compost well we've got the raised bed completely built now I reinforced the corners with some two by fours and then I went around the edges and I put some stakes that drove these into the ground about 18 inches or so and then screwed those to the sides so it's nice and sturdy again we're not going to put a ton of soil in here and this is only about nine and a half inches deep it's not like there's gonna be a lot of pressure it'll be just fine now we're going to get ready to start filling it I'm hoping that I'll be able to fill this with the tractor and just scoop compost over the trailer and bring it over that will save us a lot of time so we don't have to shovel it all by hand we'll just have to see how far up into the trailer I can get with the with the bucket of the tractor so let's head over and see what we can do [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] while we ran out of daylight last night sometimes with the best of intentions on a farm things come up and plans need to change so we didn't get this all done yesterday like we were hoping but we are going to get it done today I guarantee it so you saw that I was trying to load this with the tractor but unfortunately I can't get very far into the trailer with the tractor so this is all I was able to get was a little bit the couple scoops that I put in there the rest we're going to have to do by hand so what I'm going to do is I'm going to try to back the trailer up right along the raised bed so we're going to shovel it right in I think that will be the fastest way to do it we're happy that yesterday the forecast for today changed we were expecting rain all day but it looks like the rain is going to hold off until late this afternoon so if we can get this all shoveled out we might even be able to plant before the rain starts right so we need to get back to work we're gonna first pack that trailer up and start shoveling dirt [Music] well the raised bed is completely built filled up with compost and ready to and almost ready to be planted but there's a couple things we wanted to talk to you guys about before we start planting our potatoes the first is you may have noticed or those of you who are really observant I guest would notice that by this time most years we've got our first greenhouse full of plant starts last year we started somewhere between two and three thousand plants by this time of year so that would be ready for the farmers market this spring so you may have noticed that we haven't really shown any plant starts in that first greenhouse and that's because there there aren't any right well there aren't there aren't many there's a few in there for us the things that we will need for our gardens this year but as far as the farmers market goes we got word a few weeks ago or a couple weeks ago that the farmers market here our local farmers market that we always attend is being postponed possibly canceled for the summer but for sure postponed and because our main thing at the farmers market is selling plant starts in the early spring we've decided that this year we just can't be attending the farmers market there's a lot of work and a lot of money that goes into starting and preparing all of those plant starts for the farmers market and if there's a chance that we won't be able to sell any of them our time and energy and money are better spent preparing the plants and preparing our gardens for growing for our family so you know we're we're disappointed that we're not going to be able to sell at the farmers market this year and well and it's a loss of income for the homestead which does make a big difference right so this year you know we're sad that we're not going to be able to be there but we had to make a decision and we just need to concentrate our efforts on the things that are going to grow food for our family right yeah we really feel like this year is more important than ever to be growing as much of our own food as we can say that every year but if you're watching what's going on in the world not only with this virus but with some of the aftermath of the virus where countries around the world are stocking up their cash stockpiling food within their own countries instead of shipping it a lot of a lot of it to us that well along with some of the crazy weather that's been going on throughout our country there is a real danger of food shortages this year and I hope you guys are all taking that seriously I know that we are and it has really upped our efforts to try to get as many things in the ground as we can now there are a couple other things that are affecting us as far as the corona virus goes which I want to talk with you about two more just really quickly well as we're talking about things being postponed and canceled we got word a couple maybe a week or two ago actually that the Baker Creek may planting festival that we go to every year last we are last year we spoke there in the last couple of years we've gone there to meet a whole bunch of you this year that is being canceled and we're sad about that we were really looking forward to having an opportunity to meet a bunch of you but we're not going to be able to be there obviously this year now until further notice their monthly heritage festivals are also canceled so we used to go there for their you know monthly festivals to to enjoy it ourselves but to be able to speak with a bunch of you but until further notice those are also canceled right yeah so this this virus thing and having to stay home and everything is definitely making a big difference in a lot of different things you know another thing that may not be a big deal to a lot of you who live in cities or more populated areas is the internet but believe it or not during normal times one of the ways that we're able to put out as many videos as we do is because we actually go to Walmart at night and we use their Wi-Fi to be able to upload our videos we have internet here at home we have satellite internet but it's very slow and it takes us for one of these videos that we put out for you guys about twelve hours just to upload it to the Internet and if it's cloudy or storms it can be even longer than that or not at all right so we normally we would shoot our videos during the day we'd edit them and we'd go to Walmart at night and we'd upload our videos because we could do it there in about an hour but now because we don't want to go there we're having to do everything from home so the only reason we're telling you guys that not so you feel sorry for us and our bad internet out here from the country but so that you understand that coming up over the next few weeks if one of our one or two of our videos isn't out right at 5 a.m. and maybe because that night our internet was being extra slow and we didn't get it all the way uploaded by 5:00 a.m. so just bear in mind we're gonna do our best always still have them out at 5:00 a.m. but we may need just a little wiggle room so you guys you might have to have your coffee an hour late on a couple days coming up all right well we need to get back to planting these potatoes we wanted to share with you guys how we're gonna do this and some of the different things that we're gonna try this year because we're using this raised bed and we want to get as many potatoes growing in there as possible we're gonna use the square foot method we have a seed square that we used in the greenhouse and we really like that but I don't think that is necessary for this we're gonna be planting one potato one potato piece per square foot we're gonna do that by planting four rows in this raised bed it's 4 feet by 24 feet and then down each row we'll put a potato or a piece of potato every foot so we're gonna maximize as much room in here as possible now one thing that we're going to try this year I told you earlier that we're not going to do a whole lot of experimenting this year but there is one tiny little experiment that we're going to try in this garden normally when we plant potatoes we cut the potatoes into pieces we go out we buy our seed potatoes and if you if you buy a seed potato you know it'll look something like this it'll be a whole potato now these we've had for a while already so they're starting to grow some pretty big eyes off of here so basically what you do when you get your seed potato here's another one you can see all these little eyes everywhere you're gonna cut this into a bunch of pieces so that there's at least one or two eyes on each piece so like a this size you might be able to get four or five pieces off of and you basically just take a sharp knife and you'll just leave these sit out on the counter or wherever so that they can kind of cure over and you want to let them sit for at least several days so we already cut up all of these we cut these about four days ago they've been sitting out flat you don't want to have them in a bin like this while they're drying and you can see that they've you know kind of made like a skin over the cut area right so we'll be planting these each one of these will grow into a potato plant so this is the way that we normally do it but we've been doing a little bit of research over the winter and we're looking at different ways of doing it and we're started reading about a lot of people who like who prefer to plant the whole seed potato so we picked up another round of seed potatoes we went to the to our local farm store and we got these and we were able to pick out a bunch of these smaller ones that each one has probably you know four or five six eyes on it and these were gonna try planting whole we're not going to cut them at all and we're going to do half the garden in the pieces and we're gonna do half the garden in the whole potatoes and then at the end of the year or when these are done growing we'll be able to see which one did better for us if we got you know more potatoes off the haul ones or more off the pieces I think it's impossible for us to do things that aren't a little bit experimental we always have to try to find if there's a better way to do things and hopefully someday we'll have everything figured out we won't have to experiment any more at all but we're not to that point yeah so all right we're gonna get busy planting we're gonna run some pieces of rope from one end of this garden to the other to mark our four rows and then we'll be able to just walk along and drop our potatoes every foot and we'll be able to dig them in and get them planted we're gonna plant the potato parts like four inches down on the ground inside the dirt and so it'll be able to hopefully fill up all that dirt with potatoes and we'll just have not a huge abundance of potatoes right that would be the best key pray for that for us we have abundant potatoes and we're growing Kennebec potatoes these do really well here in southern Missouri if you want to know what type of potatoes grow well in your area it's better always just to ask some of the locals especially some of the good old boys that live in your area and they'll be able to tell you what potatoes grow best everybody around here that we know grows Kennebec and so that's what we're doing as well so this first half of the raised bed we're gonna do in the hole potatoes inside closest to you guys yeah and then the back half we're gonna do in the potato pieces we'll see which one does better [Music] this soil is so loose I can just dig down with my hand and plant these potatoes so I'm gonna look at each one of these potatoes first and see where the eyes are and I want most of the eyes face up so they can grow straight up out of the ground just gonna put that down four to six inches down move on so we're do the same exact thing for the cut ones we're just going to dig down now most of these because we've had these longer have pretty significant eyes growing already so when you see that you definitely want to put that face up but it can be completely buried over you don't want to leave it sticking out of the soil so again we'll go down about 6 inches put this in and move on to the next one the soil and this raised bed is about nine inches deep so there's a few inches below them and plenty above well the potato garden is all done built planted and now we just need to wait for them to start growing this really would have been a one day project if we could have just worked the entire day and not gotten sidetracked by other things yesterday but we got it done and that's what's the most important we had a bunch of seed potatoes left over so we're gonna look around and be creative and see if there are places that we can either plant in buckets or resurrect some of our old raised bed gardens but it was really important for us to get a head start get this thing completely planted so we can start growing some potatoes these are not going to be enough for our entire family for a year so that's why it's important for us to continue looking for more places to plant them when you start growing a lot of your own food you realize just how much you go through and how much you need if you're gonna try to grow it so it is important for us to continue looking for more places to plant potatoes so we'd love to hear from you guys what kind of extra things are you doing this year that maybe you haven't done in the past or are you increasing things or do you think no no this is a big deal it's all just gonna blow over and we should just go on with life as normal we'd love to hear from you and see what your thoughts are on everything for us we're staying here on the homestead and we're working as hard as we can to grow food for our family if you're enjoying our videos and you are enjoying what we're doing here we sure would love it if you'd hit that subscribe button we'd love it also if you could share our videos with other people that you know that may enjoy them that is the absolute best way to help us out until next time you guys thank you so much for spending the day with us on the homestead take care and God bless

Channel: Living Traditions Homestead

Views: 323,515

Keywords: Living Traditions Homestead, Missouri, Ozark's, homesteading, Ozarks, self-sufficient, homesteaders, unjobbing, growing potatoes, growing potatos, how to grow a garden, organic gardening

Id: Wx2kZyfUFoc

Length: 24min 10sec (1450 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 28 2020