Lazy approach to growing your own potatoes

I imagine many readers have been in their garden recently, if only to survey winter damage or to measure the height of the lawn growing furiously and still too wet in many places to mow. I use the small battery powered mower, not the dilapidated petrol driven Honda that demanded a service every spring one. YouTube videos taught me to clean the fuel line and replace the chord, but the older it got the more puzzling it became; so off to join the otherwise, sturdy and endlessly useful in their time, heaps of metal beasts at the recycling centre it went.

The garden is calling me, and I can’t seem to quite get myself out there. In contrast though, Jampa Ling community garden is up and running. It’s far easier to dig in company.

Last week we planted the first early “Duke of York” and soon we will put in the second earlies of “Queens”. Both should be ready in 3 – 4 months after planting. I have yet to put my hands on a few kg of Sarpo Mira, a maincrop and blight resistant variety, for later setting. We used the north midland method of planting known as coaping - but without the use of a tool called a loy. According to the National Inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage, loys are ideal for working heavy drumlin soils “with a long narrow iron mounted on a long handle with a deep heel for leverage. All these loys are one-sided to suit a left or right foot.”

I am not making this up! Perhaps you have seen it deployed (pardon the pun) at competitions during the Ploughing championships? Or on the Loy Association Facebook page.

Anyway, we made a lazy bed using a couple of long handle spades, a half- moon and a shovel. This you do when breaking new ground or re-using fallow land - that is what we were doing. Potatoes fall slightly outside the common (divisible by four), crop rotation system, one for legumes, one for brassicas, one for root crops and onion types. They need special treatment as heavy feeders, and the fact that spuds attract a wide variety of wildlife and are subject to a lot of disease – it’s not just us that loves them! They should not be re-planted in the same area for about four years. Potatoes are a fantastic crop to break new ground. There are many methods including the very popular no-dig system popularised by Charles Dowding, but this is a simple way to get a very good crop in one season while at the same time preparing for the following one… what in God’s name do I mean? I think a picture is necessary here.

For a single row, albeit mostly you will be making wider ridges and planting the spuds in double rows. Ok, imagine a long strip of lawn that you neatly mowed about 4 foot wide. First you will plonk manure or compost - about a foot strip down the middle of the length of the proposed bed.

The amount of manure will depend on how long the bed is but be prepared and have plenty of well-rotted dung put aside (Cow is best, organic if possible). Get your potato seed ready and sit a spud directly on top of the manure, eyes facing heaven, whose distance depends on early or main crops (best look it up). Now using the tip of the spade or half-moon, cut a straight line the full length of the row on either side close to the edge of the mowed area.

You are going to cut little slices of sod. Somehow get under them using your long spade, and bend them over and into the centre. Do this on either side, they will not cover the potato and the manure as the sods will be about one and a half foot long or so, and maybe only 8” wide.(I’m sticking to imperial measurements folks) Then go down the length of the furrow and top up with more soil from it using a shovel, that will deepen the furrow, and cover where the sods don’t meet in the middle of the ridge.

You will end up with deep ridges that have good drainage and remain so in place for many years (ghost ridges - see tii.ie, - here you can find a beautiful article written by Jerry O Sullivan).

There are examples of ridges like these still visible in the landscape, all kinds of ridges and not only lazy beds like the one described, but many kinds open to interpretation of how we worked with the land in the past.

After harvesting the potato crop what is left behind is largely a weed free bed that now should be sown with a green manure (keep it covered). More on green manures later…