Potato preparation and planting

Growing potatoes is a fun and easy activity and especially great to get kids involved with. It is so cool to see the eyes developing and cut up a single potato into 10 new chunks that will each become a potato plant that will grow several new potatoes.

These potatoes are a little over developed but with careful handling (not to damage the growth that has already occurred) they will make great new starts. Make sure that each chunk has at least one eye for roots and stems to sprout from.

We cut the potatoes into chunks, anywhere between 5-12 pieces per potato, and then spread them out on pans to dry a little.

The potato chunks need to harden off for two days in a cool dry place before planting.

Click here to see the trailer!

Throughout Spring I have been turning the soil over with a shovel to kill weeds and to mix the dirt with last years hay creating a good bed for the potatoes to grow.

Potatoes ready to plant after drying indoors for 2 days.

To plant the potato starts we just spread them out about 8" apart and covered them with just about 1/2" of dirt (enough to ensure good soil contact) and then covered them with 3-4" of hay. If you don't cover them with hay you would want to bury them about 2-3" deep.

The potatoes are in the middle wide row covered with fresh hay.

After we planted the potatoes we covered the bed with 3-4" of hay. This will keep the weeds down, keep animals from finding the potatoes and keep the moisture high while they are growing and lessen watering needs all year. Last year with 4" of hay I did not have to water our potatoes at all, and we had a great crop.

Our harvest from Fall 2009. It is so fun for the kids to see the fruits of their labor!

It is important to move your potatoes around from year to year so that you minimize the chance of disease. Also, you are not supposed to plant potatoes in a bed that had tomatoes the previous year as they both are affected by similar diseases.

Good Luck!

Early Spring Planting (and mulching).

We have started our bed preparation and planted just about all of our cool season plants (mid to late March). We have planted onions (both seed and bulbs), garlic, cauliflower, broccoli, many types of lettuce, kale, chard, Brussel Sprouts, arugula, spinach, potatoes, beets, carrots, snap peas, turnips, etc. The soil was still cold below the surface so I did not place any mulch/straw over the surface so the sun could continue to heat the dark soil.

Half of our hoop house is planted!

Both sides of the hoop house are planted!

My daughter helping spread straw!

Some may think that we have this backward, but we are putting down straw in all of our aisles, not on the beds. We still need the sun to heat up our planting beds so we are putting down straw in all the places we walk to give us a better/dryer surface to work from, keep the rain from washing our soil away and keep the weeds away. When things start to dry out and all our cool season plants have sprouted, I will spread straw or grass clippings around them as well to keep the soil moisture in and prevent weed growth.

What a good helper!

Look at all that area I do not have to weed this spring!

Now we just sit back and wait for rain and seed germination.

A little bit of straw over the top of my strawberries in the Spring (late March).

I did spread a little bit of straw over the top of my strawberry beds so that the new shoots can grow over the straw. This will hopefully mean more of the fruit develop sitting on top of straw instead of having direct contact with soil that rots the outside of the berries.

Planting Peas and Garlic

I am excited to get started planting peas, garlic, onions, and other cool season veggies, but first I have to clean up my bermed-up wide rows.

Wide rows full of weeds in March.

Wide rows weeded and ready for garlic and snap peas.

These weeds are going to the compost pile.

Our compost pile is divided into two areas, one new compost and one that is aged and ready for use. When the aged stuff is used up, I start over with the new garden weeds, kitchen and yard waste in it's spot and let the older stuff continue to break down. This compost area is merely concrete blocks dividing a portion of an old concrete slab up into two spaces.

Garlic cloves ready for Spring planting. I could have planted these in the fall and they would have gotten a head start, but it is still fine to plant garlic and onions in the early spring. These have already started to sprout so I have to be careful handling them and planting them.

Garlic ready to be planted.

Garlic spaced 6" apart and ready to be covered up with a little bit of soil.

We are experimenting with 5 different types of Snap Peas. I love Snap Peas and we are still experimenting with different varieties to see which ones do the best in our area and different times of year.

We use tomato cages for lots of vegetables, including cucumbers, beans and peas. This does not look like much, but I am excited to finally get some plants in the ground. Next we will plant onions, lettuce, spinach and carrots.

Indoor seed starting!

I love February. I just pulled out my handy Clyde's Garden Planner and lined up the average last Spring frost date for central Missouri and it tells me that I need to start my Cabbage and Cauliflower seeds (and soon my Broccoli) indoors. I don't really like Cabbage or Cauliflower, but it is exciting to think about Spring, and my wife likes them.

HOW TO START SEEDS INDOORS VIDEO!

I am in the process of building a seed starting room/greenhouse under a part of my house that was left unfinished when we bought it. I had hoped to have it done in time to start my seeds there this spring as it is all set up with grow lights and heat pads that can be placed under trays, but we have had a ridiculously cold winter and I have been waiting for a day with temperatures above 45 degrees for 24 hours so that I can caulk my new windows. Usually we will have a spell of weather in late January or early February where we get a couple of days in the 50's or 60's, but this has been about the coldest Winter I can remember. Last winter I covered the walls with 6 mil plastic sheets to get a jump on Spring, but the plastic ripped all to shreds and so I am in the process of going with a more permanent solution. I bought some 4' x 5' double pain windows from the local Habitat for Humanity re-sale shop for $10 each. They allow light for the entire east side of the room. I also purchased a nice used double hung window ($10) to go next to the door so that if the room gets too hot in late Spring I can open a window for ventilation. This space has exterior walls from my house on two sides and a finished roof overhead so there is convective heat coming to it from 3 sides. If I can finish the new exterior walls it ought never freeze even without a heater. It is not ideal with only east sunlight, but supplemented with grow lights I can get a 2-3 month head start on Spring and even without grow lights I would get a good 30 day jump on Spring.

A view of my seed starting room (under construction) from outside.

Enough about my works in progress and back to starting seeds. I am going to utilize a west facing window in our bathroom for our seed growing. I like to use a combination of Perlite and peat moss. This is usually the composition of pre-mixed seed starting soil mixtures that you can also use. The Perlite provides a little bit of air for the developing roots without drying them out, and the acidity of the peat moss inhibits root rot problems. If you choose to go with a compost soil you create, it really should be baked in the oven at 180 degrees for about 30 minutes to kill all the harmful pathogens. This can be stinky work, so do it on a day when you can open windows, if possible, and not when company is coming over. If you are a beginner, just buy some Perlite and peat moss. This will get you going.
If you are re-using pots, it is a good idea to soak the old ones in a bath of water and chlorine, dunking them several times to make sure all surfaces are clean. I used to think this stuff was ridiculous, but having lost a lot of seeds to various fungal deaths (root rot), I can say from experience, it is worth it to either start with new pots and soil or sterilize the re-used products. When I first saw a greenhouse operation that looked like an operating room, I thought, "how silly, seeds don't have a sterile environment in nature." What I have learned is that when growing seeds indoors we don't give plants the natural sterilants of direct sunshine and wind drying that give them a better shot in nature. Also, in nature, most seeds don't survive and I want to have all mine survive. Another trick to preventing fungal problems with delicate seeds is to provide a fan in the room (not directly on the plants) to circulate the air. This will make the seedlings stronger and help dry out the soil surface where fungal problems usually occur. If you have ever had a healthy seed germinate then suddenly fall over and die, that is probably a fungal problem.

2"x2" pots

I usually fill the pots almost all the way to the top, allowing for a dusting of soil over the seeds after they are placed. I then place two seeds per pot, believing that if one is more vigorous I can either pinch off the weaker plant or separate them at a later date when they are more durable to handle. Some people like to grow tens, if not hundreds, in trays and then after germination transplant them into individual pots. This is very tedious, so if you have the space, I think the two per pot method works for most gardeners. Some well organized people will soak their larger seeds overnight before planting. I never know when I will be planting seeds that much in advance and it only makes your seeds germinate a couple of days earlier so I don't think it is necessary.

Good luck!

How to build a simple hoop house.

We have a wide row garden layout and it worked out perfectly that our 3' wide rows and 2' wide aisles were the right distance for a hoop house to be built over them. Cattle panels are typically 16' long and as such when they are arched over they are about 7' high in the middle when they are bent over 9' apart.

The cattle panels (that you can purchase at any farm supply and a lot of hardware stores) are 50" wide and 16' long. They are arched over to create sidewalls and a roof support so if you want a 17' x 9' hoop house, you will need 4 panels and if you want an approx. 21' x 9' hoop house, you will need 5 panels.

Incidentally, these panels are useful for so many things. If you have the money, buy more than you need as they can be used as arch arbors for growing vining crops or temporary fences in a pinch. The base supports are simply 2" x 6" treated boards on end 8'-9' apart that are secured by 36" concrete form pins pounded into the ground. I pounded the concrete pins in place 9' apart then screwed the boards on the inside. You will need one other person to carry the cattle panel and place it carefully inside the wood 2x6 that will hold it in place.

Click on any photos to enlarge them.

After the panels are in place, I used zip-ties to hold them together along the ridge line where they abutted each other. We then draped the shade cloth over the top. I purchased a 24' x 20' piece of 50% shade cloth that kept our hoop house about 10 degrees cooler than the rest of the garden in summer and enabled us to grow cool season vegetables through June and July. 20' wide allows for 2' of overlap on both ends to hold it down at the base.

Heavy-duty shade cloth.

Some people prefer 50% white plastic that has the shade benefits in the summer as well as the ability to hold heat in during cold weather, so that you can grow your greens all winter long. I have not taken this step yet, but may in the future. I have not had luck with plastic and I hate throwing away huge sheets of it every other year after it breaks down. I do think that the heavy duty shade cloth helps with extending fall greens into November because it holds in some heat at night and minimizes wind damage.

The finished product!

Spring greens in our new hoop house. You can clamp the ends of the metal panels to the boards, and I purchased the clamps when I built this, but never got around to installing them. The hoop house has lasted through a winter of winds without the panels being attached at the base. More importantly is that the tops be fastened to each other, where they abut along the ridge line, so that they hold together as a unit. I use rocks to hold down the shade cloth on the outside at the bottom.