Experiment with the Potato

         As spring nears and the remnants of winter just keep hitting at us in and out. I have always planted my potatoes on Valentines Day.  This year I decided to do something different with the potatoes.  I planted them in above ground beds, two beds with very different features in each bed.  
     In the pics above you will see one bed that looks like the undergrowth of a forest.  All rich and fertile, just waiting for the seed to break ground.  This bed is an experiment for sure.  I have layered it with hay, leaf mulch, topsoil, and the best for last, cow and chicken manure.   This was hard work for this over the hill old lady, but with perseverance I completed the task.  The leaf mulch which I hauled from behind the chicken coop is the one thing that I am iffy about.  I have Roos that are outside the pen, and they are responsible for mulching the piles.  Yes, all creatures on this small farm have to pull their weight, so for the chickens, its lay or mulch.  If you don't do one or the other, then you end up in a pot for dinner.
     Now, back to the mulch, I have not done any research as to the acidity of the oak leaf in growing potatoes with it as mulch.  I hope that because of the layers and balances of the layers, it will all just turn to the perfect mulch bed.  We will see what Mother Earth gives us.  I'm pretty sure I can adjust the soil by adding to it if need be.  Anyway, in this bed, I left room at the top to add mulch and soil around the shoots when they get up good.  Mounding the soil around the shoots produces good potatoes and a lot of them.  My Grandpa always said we had to go plow the spuds.  Back then, he didn't mean jump on the tractor. No sir, he meant hitch up the mule.  That was how he farmed.  It was Hard!
      I had already bought the potato seed, red and white from Two Rivers Outdoor Farm Supply here in my small town. I cut up the potatoes where I had little eyes in each cut.  So, this task, was done and I layered the potatoes in three rows down the bed.  Then I covered them with more layers of topsoil and mulch mix.  It was going to rain the following day, so I didn't water them down.  Mother Nature would take care of that for me.  Bed #1 was completed, now on to the next bed.
     Bed #2 was a bed that I had already been using to grow other things the past two years.  I decided to add a couple of wheelbarrows full of topsoil and manure mixed to it, as a supplement.  Also, this was a bed that I had been throwing crushed eggshells in during the winter.  Again, turning over the bed by hand is hard work.  Times like these make me want to ask for help.  But I did turn the bed all over with the shovel, raked it level. and made three rows in that bed also.  
     Not as much work as the other, but after laying the potatoes in the row, eyes to the sky, I covered them with more soil.  Done, now all we have to do is wait and hope for a good row to come up.  Then we will mound them some more with soil and fertilizer each time we do this. 
I have a really good feeling about these beds.  I think my grandpa would be proud. 
     One thing that crossed my mind while layering the first bed was the hay and the problem of the seed coming up and being a nuisance in my garden.  I put the hay in first with oak mulch layer on top.  Grass will not grow underneath an oak tree. Let's hope that the acidity will not let it in my beds also.  Bahia Grass, that is the kind of hay I used.  Let's just hope that the potatoes will not mind the oak mulch. 
     One last thing, the seedlings that I planted weeks ago are doing great.  I left a picture above of them as well as the carrots, that I thought were not going to make it from the hard freeze.  This all makes me happy!