Growing Early Potatoes

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

About vertical flower beds and early potatoes

Galina Evgenievna Afanasyeva inherited from her parents a small house with a plot of 13 acres in Tolmachevo near Luga. The places there are remarkably beautiful and fertile, next to the river. After retiring in 1991, she began spending all her free summer time there, although gardening and horticulture were never her hobbies.

Galina Afanasyeva - from a family of hereditary Petersburgers, worked in a scientific institution, specializing in microbiology. She talks about her experiences as an amateur gardener.

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- I treated my site in a scientific way. At first she covered herself with books, began to study. And I soon discovered that my parents at one time acted in the same way, they planned the plot according to science, and I didn't have to change anything. I found all these books later. The plot is very beautiful, cozy, tastefully decorated. The only thing I added was to plant the porch with climbing plants and made a vertical flower bed.

This idea appeared, one might say, by accident. Somehow, a huge iron barrel for water was pierced. It was a pity to throw it away, but what to adapt to, I did not know. And I came up with the idea of making a vertical flower bed out of it. It takes up little space, which is important for those who have a very small plot.

Filling the entire barrel with good garden soil is also problematic, it is not always enough for the beds, and the barrel is so big. Then my relatives and I did this: we found a suitable piece of tin and built a cylinder of a smaller diameter inside the barrel. In the space between this cylinder and the walls of the barrel they poured small chips, old bushes of strawberries, paper, in general, all sorts of rubbish, which is enough in every area. They poured earth on top, fertilized it with compost and ash. They inserted vertical rods into the holes of the leaky barrel and sown flower seeds on top.

When everything began to grow and blossom, something unimaginable happened. The old barrel has been transformed into an amazingly beautiful green building in an abstract style. The nails from the holes of the barrel crawl out, rise upward, the nasturtiums with orange flowers rush down like a green waterfall. Bindweed with their blue phonographs create an openwork volume from below. Beauty - you can't take your eyes off.

And in the greenhouse I have a vertical bed. I honestly admit that it was not me who came up with the idea, the idea was suggested by the TV show "Tips for Gardeners", it is a pity that it is not there now. On a vertical bed, seedlings develop better, and it looks beautiful. And it turned out like this.

In the far corner of the greenhouse, we placed a bag of earth. In the middle of it, a pipe was installed, which was made from plastic bottles with holes to moisten the earth. They filled the bag completely, to the top, generously pouring it with diluted manure and ash brewed with boiling water. On the outer surface of the bag, on the sides, holes were made into which the worst, weakest seedlings of peppers and eggplants were planted. Cucumbers were sown on the horizontal top of the bag. The result is excellent. All the plants developed well and gave a good harvest.

To finish the story about the greenhouse, I will mention one more way of growing plants. I decided why not use the entire greenhouse space, why it would be wasted. She took black plastic bags, poured earth into it and hung them from the ceiling of the greenhouse. I also planted weak seedlings there, ordinary greenhouse plants. Peppers, eggplants, cucumbers developed very well there. The earth warmed up perfectly in black bags, in the upper part of the greenhouse the air was warm and light enough, so that the experiment turned out to be successful.

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Early potato

Now I'll tell you about how I grow early potatoes.

It can be harvested and used as early as mid-June. I hope that novice gardeners will take note of this method. It's nice to serve young tasty potatoes to the dinner table in June. And not brought from the Krasnodar Territory, but grown with love on our hundred square meters.

As I have already said, after retiring and starting to engage in gardening, I, out of the habit of a scientist, turned to special literature. And on the basis of what she read, she deduced her own method of growing early potatoes, which yields a yield of 1:17 and even 1:23, that is, about two dozen tubers grow from one tuber. The method is good, its only drawback, I warn you right away, is laboriousness.

So, at the beginning of March, we wash the selected potato tubers, process them with a pink solution of potassium permanganate, dry them and put them in three-liter jars or in plastic bags with holes in the light (but not in the sun) for landscaping. There is one secret here - it is better to take half a tuber with a top, on which there are more eyes that wake up earlier and give stronger and more productive seedlings.

Then, after planting greenery, we lay out the tubers in boxes or boxes with holes for air, sprinkling with any wet substrate - sawdust, peat, newspapers, etc. After four days, the eyes start to grow and release white hairy roots in all directions. The eyes, which gave several roots 1-1.5 cm each, are carefully cut out with a part of the tuber, and the rest of the tuber is put back in the box for germinating the remaining eyes. All sections must be powdered with ash.

We plant the cut eyes in small containers made from one third of a liter milk bag. After 2-3 days, the seedlings come out of the ground and begin to grow very quickly, just water. It does not require any special conditions, unlike peppers and tomatoes. By this time, it is necessary to prepare the bed.

As soon as the snow melts, the ground must be covered with a film, preferably black, so that it warms up and the weeds come out. In late March - early April, seedlings can be planted in the ground. Pour ash, humus, hay, last year's grass, half-ripe leaves into the furrows. We place the seedlings in the furrow obliquely and fall asleep "headlong" so that there is 2-3 cm of soil above the top. We close it with lutrasil or other covering material, and on top of the arcs or sticks we stretch the old film, well strengthening it along the edges so that there is a positive temperature inside. Under such a shelter, green potato tops can withstand frosts up to -6 degrees.

When the seedlings come out of the ground, cover it with soil again. Then we water, we spud. We feed like regular potatoes. When the air temperature is above +10 degrees during the day, we open the film for a day. Our potatoes bloom at the end of May, and we begin to dig up tubers on June 15th.

The yield of this method is due to the fact that on average there are 10-17 eyes on each tuber. With the usual method, at best, 5-6 eyes grow on the tuber, and often much less. When grown by the method I proposed, each eye of the grown seedlings gives 2-4 medium-sized tubers. As a result, we planted one kilogram of potatoes, and collected 1.5-2 buckets. The summer of last year was damp, the potatoes in the beds were not born. And under cover, grown from seedlings, he gave a wonderful harvest. By mid-June, some gardeners are only weeding out, and we are already digging potatoes.

If you are not afraid of the laboriousness of the method, you will be with an early and abundant potato.