(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.