About two apple boxes full of potatoes serves me through an entire
year for eating and
for next years seeding.

Years before I would seed only the tiny small ones of the size of my
fingertip or if I had
a large potato to seed I would cut it into sections. But this year I
seeded about 20 full
sized potatoes leftover from winter. And they have done marvellous for
they are waist
high whereas the others are ankle high in growth. So from now on I
want to plant
full sized potatoes along with the small ones.

And I have had trouble with the heavy clay soils so what I did this
year was make
a bed of 4 rows of potatoes and spaded it with horsemanure so that the
topsoil is
1/2 soil and 1/2 horsemanure. The horse manure lightens up the heavy
clay.

And so this year, my potato crop is doing the best it has ever done
with the potatoes
in bloom and waist high to me standing. Yesterday I had to weed the
potatoes and it
took all of 5 minutes with a headshears where I cut the thistle out of
the bed. So 5 minutes
is really nice. And I suppose that horsemanure attracts thistle seed
like nothing else.

Whereever I apply horsemanure it seems as though the thistle springs
up.

Now maybe thistle is a good thing, whereas we have always seen it as
only bad. Perhaps because
of the fast growth of thistle and because it is easy to headshear the
emerging thistle that
this clipping provides the potato crop added fertilizer.

It takes me but 5 minutes to go through those 4 rows of potatoes and
clip the thistle.

Now there is one thing I have never really understood about potatoes.
When exactly are they
harvested? I usually wait to the end of the autumn before winter to
collect them. But maybe
there should be two crops of potatoes in a season. Maybe I should be
harvesting in the middle
of summer and plant an autumn crop of potatoes? I am not sure.

Archimedes Plutonium
www.iw.net/~a_plutonium
whole entire Universe is just one big atom
where dots of the electron-dot-cloud are galaxies

wrote:

Whereever I apply horsemanure it seems as though the thistle springs
up.

Rather than thistle being attracted to manure, likely the spading brings
the thistle seed to the surface of the soil. Many small seeds like that
need light to germinate.

M. Reed

monique wrote:
wrote:

Whereever I apply horsemanure it seems as though the thistle springs
up.

Rather than thistle being attracted to manure, likely the spading brings
the thistle seed to the surface of the soil. Many small seeds like that
need light to germinate.

M. Reed

Maybe the horsemanure had some thistle seed as its contents?

Which brings up another line of questioning as for the need of drying
seeds. I had
gathered some rock elm seed of 9 seeds which were green and not dried.
Now mabe
elm seed needs drying or maybe it needs alot of light to germinate
also.

I would think that drying of seed is a purely human artifical desire
for Nature has
planted seeds for millions of years before we were around.

Anyway, those 9 rock elm seed have not managed to sprout. Maybe if I
put them in
full sun would help.

Archimedes Plutonium
www.iw.net/~a_plutonium
whole entire Universe is just one big atom
where dots of the electron-dot-cloud are galaxies