Update from March 31

Big day of planting.

Put in 10 lbs of Irish Cobbler potato and 10 lbs of Kennebec. The method in which I am planting potatoes is to make a 1.5 ft diameter mound and place 1 good eye or 2 to 3 weak eyes in the mound. The mounds are then staggered so the rows can overlap and the area is intensively used. The area in between the mounds will also be planted probably with onions and possibly with some flowers.

I am trying different methods of planting the potatoes in the freshly tilled ground. I was kind of blown away when I saw the first batch I put in and the degree to which the grass clumps have reestablished themselves. I can see that the first section is going to be a weeding nightmare. My long term plan for that 20 ft section is to wait until the potato plant is about 6 inches tall and then I will put down about 4 inches of composted wood chips but I had already interplanted onion plants between the mounds so that might be difficult.

I tilled the rest of the 100 ft section for a second time to break up the reestablished grass. I then used a pitch fork to break up the compacted sub-soil the tiller did not reach. The second two sections I mounded the potatoes across the entire 6 ft strip in a staggered fashion. One of those sections has been mulched to a depth of 4 inches with composted wood chips and the last section is bare.

In between these sections of potatoes, I used a hard rake to pull the grass clumps to north side of the plot making a raised row 10 ft long and 1 ft tall. My hope is that the grass will dry out in the row and die. Later on I will try to plant a root crop in those elevated rows. The groomed sections were then lined out with onion plants and sown with Georgia collard seed. I have never grown collards before and do not know if it will work from seed in the plot.

Realizing that the potatoes and onions took up the majority of 6x100 ft food plot, tilled an additional 1,200 sq feet 15 and 24 feet north of the original plot. These plots will be for sweet/feed corn, tomatoes, melons, squash and peppers.

It has been dry and breezy since Wednesday. Hopefully we will get a nice sustained rain to get things rolling.