No Dig Potato Farming

Spring is in full swing here in the Pacific Northwest and I finally got out in the garden to prep the beds and start planting.  One of my projects this Easter Weekend was to plant a potato bed.

This will be my third year of growing potatoes and I have decided to try a new technique.  My first attempt at growing potatoes was to plant them in some potato sacks that I bought at my local feed and garden store.  They didn't work very well and while the harvest was very tasty it wasn't terribly plentiful.  The second year I grew potatoes I decided to grow them in a raised bed and while I did harvest more and larger potatoes it was kind of a pain to get every last tater out of the bed.  This year I am losing a bed because I am planting 10 asparagus crowns so I wasn't sure I wanted to lose another to potatoes.  I debated if I wanted to build some potato boxes I saw on Pinterest, but then I found a no dig method of growing potatoes.  I decided to "dig" a little more online and settled on a method that would require no building of new beds or boxes and no digging to plant or even later to harvest... easy peasy.

I started with a nice clear area on top of the bark chips where our play structure used to sit.  I covered the space with a nice 3 inch thick layer of our home grown compost.

I then laid the potatoes directly on top of the compost layer with the sprout sides facing upward.  I spaced them about 1 to 1.5 feet apart.

Next I covered the potato/compost layers generously with straw.

Lastly, I added a thick layer of fresh lawn clippings to help weigh the straw down and to provide an extra added mulch layer.

Each year I try some new crops and/or new techniques in the garden and some flop while others render exciting results.  I will keep you posted on how this little experiment goes.