- Hello and a very warm welcome back to HuwsNursery.
Now, about a year ago, I made a video called
Growing Potatoes the Lazy Way,
which is where you had a site like this,
you put the soil, you literally placed the potatoes
on top of the soil and then you put a load of hay
or straw over the top.
And, that's been really successful, over 600,000 views.
But it has sparked many questions
and queries and comments.
So, I decided that it would be a good idea
to do a frequently asked question video
based on Growing Potatoes the Lazy Way,
'cause there's a few things I want to clear up
and there's also some comments that I've seen
come on time and time again.
So, I'd like to answer those
and hopefully this'll be useful.
So, I've got about eight different questions
that I've picked out.
The first one is, "Should you use straw
"instead of hay because of grass seed?"
Now, this is a really valid question
because with hay, especially if you cut it late
after the wildflowers have seeded,
yes, you will have seed in the mixture.
Now, we're using hay quite a lot here
in the vegetable garden, basically as a mulch.
And the thing is, if you use hay as a mulch,
it's fine as long as you don't
then expose the bare soil afterwards.
So, what we're doing especially with our brassicas
or broad beans, we're putting on a lot of hay
and with our broad beans for example,
we've only had to put on two mulches so far
and it's taken a long time for any weeds to grow through.
And just as long as you continue
applying the hay on top of the ground,
this'll break down but then the new hay
will stop all the weeds growing through.
So, when we're growing potatoes,
yes, I can see a couple of weeds
but we're honestly not bothered about that.
We'll just let the hay rot down like this
and then we'll just place another load on top
and then over the years, this is just going to build
organic matter and fertility.
But if you can, use straw that's fine
and that's only if you want to then
have bare ground to grow in the following year.
The next question, this came up quite a lot.
"I noticed that when you uncover the potatoes,
"some look green.
"We're some green due to shallow planting
"and the light coming through the straw?
"I'm really interested in doing this,
"but I discard green potatoes."
Yes, again another very valid point.
It was an experiment, I did admit in the video
that it was an experiment.
What we found was that unfortunately the light
of the video was quite interestingly,
it made some of the potatoes appear green
when actually they weren't.
Out of the batch of potatoes which were green,
I think about three had spots of green
and that's what we get in the usual potato harvest.
However, we have learned from that
and all I recommend you do again, just like last comment
is to make sure that you place another layer
of grass, or hay, or straw over the top.
So, keep on building it up so there's less chance
for the sunlight to hit the potato and turn them green.
And, make sure you don't eat green potatoes,
however, you do need to have excess
before there's any health problems.
"How much time does it take until harvest?
"And how often do you have to water them?"
So, I'll answer the first question first.
Depends what you're growing.
If you're growing first earlies,
it can be 10, 12 weeks before you harvest them.
With second earlies, it's probably about 12 to 14 weeks.
A good rule of thumb is to wait until we can see flowers,
so you might be able to see a couple of flowers here,
that's kind of a good signal to say, okay,
you can start harvesting now.
Yes, you can harvest some earlier
but they will just be smaller,
or you can leave them longer and they'll be bigger.
But anytime around flowering, then you can harvest them.
Now, the second part of that question was,
how often do you have to water them?
In my life of growing potatoes,
I don't remember watering once.
That's usually because potatoes can cope quite well
in dry conditions.
Also, in Wales we do get a fair amount of rain.
And also now, because of the mulch,
that's retaining the moisture so we don't actually
need to water it very often.
Well, you don't need to water it all in fact.
So, that's one of the great things about growing potatoes,
is that we don't need to water them ever
and that saves us a lot of time.
And from a single tuber
you can get a huge harvest from them.
Now, there is this discussion thinking
that yeah, you don't have to grow potatoes
because they're actually really, really cheap
to buy in supermarkets and it's completely your choice
with what you want to grow.
The next question is, "Can you use old leaves
"instead of straw?"
Yes, I'm pretty sure you can give that a try.
Again, it's all an experiment.
We were just going for it with hay
and we're really pleased with the results
because it was so simple to do.
We've got another right in front of me here,
we've got another bed we're growing it the lazy way.
And, I'm sure you can use old leaves.
The thing about leaves is that they can blow away,
really easily, so you might have to pile on quite a lot
and see how that goes.
Because with the hay, yes, it can be blown away
but as soon as you've had one rainfall
for example, in growing the potatoes the lazy way,
we did water them in right at the start
just to make sure that the hay was compacted
and then it won't blow away.
With the leaves, yeah, you might want to give it a water
or you might want to layer some different organic
materials so it's almost creating compost
on top of the potatoes as their growing,
so it's also feeding the soil that way.
So, give it a go and let me know how it goes.
This is a funny question, "Does anyone count
"how many times he's said potatoes?"
Yup, I counted it and in that video I said potatoes
21 times and to be honest I was expecting more.
"Where did the green potato stems go?"
Yes, this is a very, very common question,
because it showed B-roll footage or the stock footage
of the potatoes growing
and then when it came to harvesting them,
the stems had disappeared
and people saying that I'd faked it.
And it was quite funny, there was some farmer who said,
"I know it when someone is trying to have me on."
Honestly, I didn't fake it at all,
because the potatoes were quite well placed in the ground,
for starters and it was the same bed.
We get a problem with blight here,
so, that was something I didn't explain
in the Growing Potatoes the Lazy Way video.
Unfortunately, we get blight quite early on,
so, to save our potatoes, we take off the stems.
So, if notice blight at the top, we'll just cut it back.
But then, when blight really does strike,
we'll just cut the stems off so that means
that it doesn't, the disease doesn't travel into the tubers.
So, that's why and that's where all the green stems went.
But, next year we're looking
at a potential couple of different potato varieties
which are blight resistant and organic,
so that should be exciting.
"What about hilling or earthing up?"
Hilling and earthing up does increase productivity.
We still use that when we're using the traditional way
of growing potatoes.
We'll still hill them up using a rake
and that just creates more space to grow more potatoes.
When you're looking at first earlies or new potatoes
you don't have to hill them up
and growing it the lazy way, it is just that,
it is a lazy way, it was an experiment
and we were really pleased with the results.
So, you can hill or earth up.
You can maybe take away the straw, hill it up a bit
and then put the straw or hay back over the top
but again, it's all down to personal preference.
There's no right or wrong, it's completely your choice.
And the final question is,
"What was the other way of growing potatoes?"
'Cause it seems that there's quite a few people
in the world's actually already using the method
of growing the method of growing potatoes the lazy way.
The traditional, conventional vegetable gardening method
is where you dig trenches about a foot deep
or 30 centimetres deep and then you line it
with compost or maybe some well-watered manure
and then you plant the potatoes there.
And then you cover the soil back in
and then you earth up from there.
The growing the potatoes the lazy way is a method
of growing potatoes where you don't have to do any digging
at all, apart from perhaps using a fork
right at the end to harvest them.
So, again, it's just a very different way
of growing potatoes, but we you use both methods here.
And, it's all down to how much effort you want to put in
and also how much you want to get out
because most likely, growing potatoes
the traditional way of trenches and then earthing up
will give you higher yields,
so it's all down to personal choice.
Anyway, I hope this video has answered
the frequently asked questions
and has given you a better understanding
a bit more in-depth.
And, I felt it was needed and let me know
what you thought about this kind of video format.
I haven't really done something like this
for years, in terms of answering lots of questions.
So, I think I might bring this in a bit more
because I love seeing your questions
but I can't answer all of them because it would be,
it would take up a lot of time
which unfortunately I don't have.
So, thank you very much for watching.
Don't forget to give this a thumbs up
and stay tuned for some more videos
teaching you how to grow your own food,
inexpensively at home.
(upbeat guitar playing)