Spuds wonderful spuds... mashed, deep-fried or roasted...

G'day all and welcome!

Today I had a gardening encounter with earth's most versatile vegetable of the tuber variety, the humble potato. I've been growing taters for a while now,  but I thought I might try one of these newfangled fashionable methods of growing, the "grow bag". 

Heavy weight, UV resistant, durable material with a couple of holes in the bottom. Two person job to move them when full!

Potatoes are not a "set and forget" plant like sweet potatoes or yams. they require a little maintenance to get the best out of your plants - it's easy but requires commitment.

I ordered my seed potatoes and the 75L grow bag from Greenharvest online. I've bought from them many times, and they are fantastic.  It's important that your seed potatoes are disease free - which is why you shouldn't use spuds you've bought from the store, especially if they're not from a certified organic grower.

Clean & disease free. Store in darkness!

Spuds like to be planted about 10-15cm deep. You can sow direct to the soil, or you can sprout your slips in seed raising mix, at about 5cm deep, and then plant them out. Your seed potatoes may be planted whole, or cut in half to give you more plants. If cutting, leave the halves out in open air for 2-3 days so that a scab forms, to lessen the chances of it rotting. Make sure that each piece has at least two healthy looking "eyes" on it, as this is where your vines will sprout from.

Choose a nice sunny spot, spuds don't really like the cold.

For the grow bag, I've put about 15cm of good quality potting mix, and planted the sprouted potatoes about 10cm down. I've then covered the green vine all the way up to the leaves of the plant. I'm using desiree potatoes for this bag. The ones in the soil/mulch hay garden bed currently are sebago, and I've got some beautiful purple congo's that I'm excited to try my hand at too.

Pick a nice sunny spot for your potatoes. Warm soil will help them grow faster, and as the bulk of the plant is well insulated under the surface, they're not easily hurt by a hot day in full sun, even if they may seem to wilt a little on the more brutal summer days.

As your potato plants grow, they will shoot up, and maybe branch. When you have sections of more than 15cm above the soil, gently lay them over, and cover with soil, or mulch hay. This creates more vine under the soil, and gives you more potatoes per plant. For this grow bag, I will be laying the plants down in an anti-clockwise direction, and as there are two plants, they will form a loose spiral as they continue to grow.

Growing in a soil bed in your garden, you have the opportunity to dig for "new" potatoes, throughout the growing period of the plant. You'll likely be pleasantly surprised at how quickly the little tubers develop! You want to look at where the older sections of the vine, and this is obviously easier if you are covering with hay mulch rather than soil.  Try not to disturb the vine, or the budding baby potatoes if you can help it. New potatoes are best used within a few days, as they don't store as well as old potatoes, from a finished plant.

New potatoes and baby potatoes, found easily by lifting some mulch hay. Note the green vine has blanched, and there are baby tuber growing next to the larger ones that can be harvested.

Eventually your plant will run out of green, and decide to wilt and die. Don't be sad! It's all part of the process. Give it a couple of weeks for the whole plant to finish off. Then, when you can't stand to wait anymore, go digging for treasure! If you're using a grow bag, or have built a box, it's as simple as tipping it over. if you've planted in a garden bed, use a garden fork, gently, starting at the edges and working your way in so as not to spear a spud with the tines.

New potatoes - these are sebago potatoes. Great for mashing or roasting, or baking whole.

Store your large potatoes, eat the mediums & smaller ones first as they won't store as long. Make sure to store your spuds for eating in a cool, dry, dark place - a hessian bag in the cupboard is ideal. Sunlight will make the spuds turn green, and green potatoes are poisonous  - do not eat them.

If  you are going to keep some of your harvest for seed, choose tubers that are the similar size to your original seed potatoes of that variety - for me that's about 5cm across, and make sure it has good healthy skin, and a good number of eyes for new vines. Don't wash them, simply start the process anew.

The perfect seed potato (this is a purple congo). Several eyes, no disease or scarring, a fine layer of the soil it was grown in.

Here where we are, we get two (or more) good crops of potatoes per year. I plant at the end of winter (after the last frost) and late summer. If you get snow in your area you may only get the one crop, although you could stagger your plantings to have an early crop planted late winter, and a later crop planted at the end of spring.

And if your sprouts come up and you think they look like tomatoes - don't panic. Potatoes and tomatoes are both part of the nightshade family, and can look very similar. The colour of the vine depends on the variety of potato, and can vary from a light spring green to a deep purple.

Cheers, M

A Whole New Soggy Ecosystem

G'day and welcome!

So winter solstice has passed, the days are getting longer, we've only a couple of frosts between now and what is guaranteed to be a long, hot summer. Summer in Australia is of course heralded by the most loathed of insects, the mosquito.

Keeping livestock as we do, we keep a number of water troughs. One for each paddock really. The smaller tubs, which hold about 20 gallons, are no hassle to keep clean, they're topped up and checked on daily, if one needs to be scrubbed it can be easily tipped into another, mind you that's rare as the constant influx of new water (town water here is chlorinated and fluoridated, yuk) keeps "life" from developing.

However the big paddock has a trough that is sized to cope with the drinking requirements of several large animals on a hot summer day. We use an old bathtub, large, solid iron lined with white enamel, heavy as a hereford bull. The kind that was designed before the words "water restrictions" were ever put next to each other in a sentence!

This lovely large tub keeps the water cool, being more than knee deep when full. The constant exposure to sunlight takes care of any chlorine very quickly however, and between the mozzies that breed there, and the algae that inevitably develops, it needs to be emptied and scrubbed every couple of weeks, until now. This year I thought we'd try a new method, rather than wasting all that water.

An Australian native swamp grass to help with oxygen in the water.

Being inspired by a couple of posts on the Keeping a Family Cow forum, we decided on a couple of goldfish. They're hardy, pretty, and the no-fuss pet of choice for kids that live in apartments.... if city folk can keep them alive, how easy will this be! 

I went to the local pet store, and bought a half dozen, very pretty, brightly coloured goldfish with beautiful fantails.. some with googly eyes, some with spots and stripes. Took them home, followed the instructions on the fish bag, and after leaving the bag in the tub for 15 minutes let them go. 

Little Farmgirl loves visiting the trough!

The casualty rate, was high. 

I'd not really researched it you see, and the limited information bestowed upon me by the pet shop clerk was obviously not going to be enough.

I discovered much about the humble goldfish. Did you know, for instance, that they can survive water temps of "almost frozen"? Apparently in China people break through ice to get to the fish.  Amazing little things. They are extremely hardy, but are intolerant to rapid change of PH in their water, as I found out, it can kill them. 

Crows and other birds also find them tasty treats, those bright colours made them easy to pick off. The beautiful long tails made them slow and cumbersome, unable to escape the predators. 

Having done more research and learning more interesting facts about keeping fish in an outside tank or trough, I made some big changes to the tub. I added some plants, to help with oxygenation. I also chose to purchase some little blue crayfish, some shrimp, some snails, and some new fish. We carved a piece of timber to provide some hidey holes, and weighted it down with a bessa brick,  for the fish to swim through and hide in.

Hiding places are important - if you can see the fish so can the predatory birds like crows.

This time we went with uncoloured goldfish. They're cheap, and for most people, the muted bronze or pewter colours are boring, hard to see, not exciting at all. They're the comet type, lithe, streamlined, lightning fast in the water. These fish are perfect. I also got some feeder guppies... used by people with aquariums to feed their pet oscar or barramundi live prey.

Now we introduced them slowly to the water, a half cup at a time, and with the shrimp, guppies, crays, snails.... and this time we've had much more success. The cattle don't eat the submerged plants, or (to my husbands amazement) suck up the fish when they drink. 

Snail, feasting on algae.

The fish are certainly keeping the mosquito population down, and I've not had to scrub the tub in a month. 

I love going down to top up the trough now. I've got a whole new set of mini livestock to look after in there, and it's a window into another world. The guppies are more social than the goldies, they are easily visible from the surface. 

Crayfish are a useful addition, the clean up any casualties or left over food.

The crays come out most at dawn and dusk, and take care of any leftover food (or the occasional half eaten guppy) that sinks to the floor of the tub. The snails truck around,  cleaning scunge from the edges, as do the shrimp. 

Shrimp, surrounded by guppies.

I'll update if we get to summer, how the mosquito population is declined or not. But for now, even if it's just for the lovely aesthetics I would highly recommend this experience for anyone too lazy to scrub their troughs too often :)

Cheers,  M.