How to Grow Potatoes

Potatoes are the most productive staple crop you can grow in Ireland. They have nutritional value of about 750cals/kg and a surprising amount of protein. They need minimal care and attention, no processing other than cooking. Yields of 30 Tonnes/ha are normal in conventional agriculture and on a garden scale this is possible too. That is 3kg/sqm, (or a half stone), or 2,250cals, roughly enough food for an average person in a day. This means that by planting an area of 400sqm or 40mx10m (less than 1/10th of an acre) you could have enough calories for the year.

Potatoes like a rich fertile soil with plenty of organic matter, an even supply of water, and a good weeding early in the season. The flavour of potatoes varies with soil condition more than any other crop that I know of. Potatoes grown with too much fresh manure, seaweed or chemical fertiliser have poor flavour. I think the best potatoes are grown in newly broken up grass land, without any applications whatsoever. They are also good when grown with well composted manure. Some people have a problem with wireworm in grass but it isn't a problem here.

The most important factors when planting potatoes are getting them under the surface of the soil, keeping them weed free and earthing up. A good organic soil will hold enough water for potatoes and they should never need watering. Watering very dry soil, (in a tunnel for instance), causes potatoes to crack a a sudden watering causes the tubers to expand so fast that the skins burst open.

On a garden scale you can just place them on the surface of the soil and pile compost and mulch on top, but it is important to keep a heavy mulch on top as if the new tubers are reached by light they will go green, and green potatoes contain poisonous substances. Alternatively you can prepare the soil by digging or rotovating and push them under the soil. The deeper you push them the less earthing up you will have to do, but the slower they will come up. I like to get all my potatoes in about now and if all the ground is not prepared, I dig a trench, put as much good compost in it as i can spare, and then the seed potatoes. I cover them up roughly and as they begin to come up I fork out any weeds between the rows. As soon as possible they need to be earthed up. This means moving soil between the rows, against the stems, to cover them but without covering too much of the leaf area. Bringing soil around the plants kills the weeds, and encourages the stems to produce tubers. It also covers tubers close to the surface preventing them from going green.

I space early potatoes about 30cm apart in rows 60cm apart and maincrop potatoes 40cm apart in rows 90cm apart.

Early potatoes come out of the ground from June to August so there is time to grow another crop after them. Leeks or spring cabbage make a good crop to follow potatoes depending on your rotation.

Harvesting potatoes is a satisfying job. Care must be taken not to stick the fork through them. So, insert your fork 30-40cm from the stalk and lever them up all around.

When harvesting maincrop potatoes for storage they must be sorted and the skins dried. Harvest all of them even the marbles as they will be weeds next year. Divide them into marbles and damaged potatoes for animals, small green potatoes that can be destroyed, slightly damaged potatoes for immediate use, seed for next year, and perfect potatoes, for storage.

Storage Potatoes need to be dry when stored and keep best in a cool environment, but will rot if frozen, so in ireland, unless you have a cold store, a cool shed or back kitchen is best. We keep them in the unheated back kitchen as it is rodent free. In cold weather potatoes must be covered by straw or other insulating material to protect from frost.

Selecting potatoes for seed.

You can save your own seed for potatoes if you are a bit careful. Potatoes suffer from viruses which reduce yield and are not immediately obvious in the field. Plants with viruses may be stunted, have curled or yellow leaves and generally look poorly. Always select potatoes for seed from best looking plants. Seed potatoes are traditionally produced in Donegal and in high altitude sites where the aphids that spread viruses are absent. The potatoes for seed should be approximately egg-sized, but larger green potatoes can be used for seed too. The seed potatoes should be left in the light for a few days to harden the skins, but not allowed to dry out too much. If seed potatoes are stored at too high a temperature they will be come wrinkled prunes and use up all their energy supplies before they are planted. This is especially true for early potatoes that are programmed to sprout early. If you have room for them in the bottom of the fridge that will help hold them. As soon as they start to sprout they must be kept in the light or the sprouts will look for light and grow too long. They will then fall off when you handle them. A couple of weeks before planting, seed potatoes should be put n a cool bright area for the sprouts to develop. This is called chitting.

There are still a few places on:

Growing your own Staple foods Part 1: 18th March. http://www.brownenvelopeseeds.com/courses/growing-your-own-staple-foods-part-1-18th-march/

By the way, we don't sell seed potatoes.

Grow your own pancakes

We are celebrating Shrove Tuesday with pancakes made from out own hulless oats. A coffee grinder full, and half an egg per person, seems about right, and then enough milk to make it the right consistency. Served with butter and honey it should power us up for the day.

Growing cereals and and other small grain crops such as quinoa and amaranth is possible on a garden scale. I have blogged about growing quinoa and oats before. The main problem with the cereals is that birds like them too, and they may need to be netted or harvested while they are a bit green to save them from our wretched feathered friends. Drying them off in the polytunnel in a 'stook' works fine for this. The main drawback with quinoa is that the seeds are covered with a bitter coatng of saponins that must be removed before they are edible. This is a tedious task, and I am working on different ways of doing it. Amaranth likes a good summer.
Grains can all be grown in more or less the same way, on a garden scale. I sow them directly in the ground in rows about 20cm apart. I throw a piece of mono filament fish-netting over the bed, after sowing, to keep the birds off. As soon as the rows can be seen I take off the netting and hoe the bed. This kills the weeds before they get established and the space between the rows leaves room for my swivel hoe. Some cereals such as spelt and perennial wheat do better if sown in autumn, whereas oats, quinoa and buckwheat do fine sown in spring. So long as they are kept weeded they need very little attention until they are ready to harvest. The bird will alert you to this fact. They will be watching them constantly. Then you must act fast and get them under cover. Threshing and cleaning is a bit of a job but very satisfying.

We are running the first of a two part course on growing your own staple foods on the 18th of March. The course will include calculating your food needs, planting potatoes and sowing grains and pulses. You can book here, buy quinoa and amaranth seed here or buy cereal seeds here. Sooo....what is everyone giving up for lent?

Growing onions from seed

There are a number of advantages of growing onions from seed. The first is minimising the chances of bringing in a nasty disease. The second is having a larger choice of varieties and the third is cost. A packet of onion seed contains as many potential onions as 2kg of sets and is a lot cheaper. However they do need to be started earlier than sets, to produce large onions.

The seeds should be sown between now and the end of February and kept between 10-15°C (50-59°F) which is a bit warmer than outside. They can make use of propagator space before it is needed for tomatoes etc., or started on a sunny window sill. Sow four or five seeds per module in damp seed compost and grow each module as a clump. This is called multi-planting. Imagine each module growing on as a bunch and becoming a week's supply of onions. When planted out the clumps of bulbs will push themselves apart as they expand. There is a nice picture of multi-planted onions here http://tinyfarmblog.com/onions-from-seed/ Water module trays carefully, as onions don't like to be over-watered, and it may cause damping off, or death. They can be moved out of the propagator once they are up and growing, and at a time when it will be needed for other things. The seedlings can be hardened off in a greenhouse or cloche before planting outside in March of April. Onions like a sunny bed which is well drained and fertile but without too much nitrogen. If your soil is soggy you will not get good results and will need to add organic matter and grit to make it drain well, or raise the onions up on a ridge, or raised bed. When planted out, the modules can be 8" (20cm) apart which makes hoeing between them practical and hand weeding close to the plants is easier than if they are in rows, without enough space between them, for a hoe to pass. Onions do not compete well with weeds and will be easily swamped, resulting in small onions. High humidity in weedy onion patches also encourages diseases like powdery mildew. Some gardens have a really nasty onion disease called White Rot which causes a white fungal growth on the bottom of the onion. The spores live for years in the soil so if you have this disease you really can't grow onions.

Harvesting onions in clumps is easy, with one hand for each clump and about 50 clumps a 50lb crop can be harvested in a few minutes. This should be done as soon as the leaves begin to go yellow and the tops fall over. Then they need to be dried. Drying onions well is crucial to keeping well. Laying them out on a piece of plastic, one deep, in a greenhouse or polytunnel works. Making them into braids and hanging them up is even better, but is more time consuming. It can take several weeks for onions to dry properly. At this point a lot of their skins will fall off easily and they will be nice and shiny. Then they need to go in a cool but not damp place. I move them to our unheated 'back kitchen' where they can remain good until April or May.

To save your own onion seed select your best forty onions after harvest. Set them aside and only eat the ones that go soft. When you have twenty left, replant them in the ground in the greenhouse or tunnel about 1' (30cm) apart. This should be done in January or February. They will flower the following summer and produce seed ready to harvest in September. When it is ready to harvest the black seeds will start falling out of the flower heads. They can then be cut off and dried on a piece of plastic in the greenhouse. Tun the heads over every now and then to ensure they dry on all sides. Rubbing the heads will make the seed fall out when it is dry. Twenty onions will give you enough seed for all your friends and neighbours for several years. Onions will cross pollinate with other onions but not with leeks or anything else. The seed will keep for two or three years.

West Cork Artisan Food Awards

Brown Envelope Seeds has been nominated for the West Cork Artisan Food Awards. We are so excited. What would we do with €5,000? Suggestions please. The photos are of our cat and some kiwanos.

Party Time

We celebrated the arrival of the 2012 Brown Envelope Seeds catalogue and calendar at the opening of Sonia Caldwell's exhibition of paintings last night ( Friday 11th of November) at the Riverside Cafe in Skibbereen. The exhibition was opened by horticulturist Kitty Scully of RTE's 'How to create a garden'. We made it our Christmas party and stayed on for a delicious meal. Thanks to all at the Riverside that made it a great evening. Both the calendar and catalogue are illustrated with Sonia's watercolours of vegetables and their flowers. The calendar is available directly from Soniasoniacaldwell@eircom.net, and the catalogue is available from seeds@brownenvelopeseeeds.com and the seeds are available from www.brownenvelopeseeds.com

Caoimhe
Jacinta French and Eimer with Don Pollard.
The Brown Envelope Seeds team.Ruth Bulough and Mike Sweeney
Paul McCormack of Woodkerne Nurseries and Tom Atkins
Sonia, Eamon, Caoimhe and Ailbhe (hope I have spelt them correctly)
Joy Larkcom and Kitty Scully

2012 Catalogue Cover Girl

The 2012 catalogue is going to print this week. It will be the most beautiful one yet with this painting of the Crimson Flowered Broad Bean by Sonia Caldwell on the cover.

Sonia is producing a Brown Envelope Seed calendar this year. To get one of these you can email Sonia directly at soniacaldwell(at)eircom.net They will also be for sale at all the best garden centres.

I love the story of how the Crimson flowered Broad Bean was saved from extinction by a Miss Cutbush who gave four seeds to the Heritage Seed Library in 1978. There is a great review of it by independent plant breeder, blogger and musician Rebsie Fairholm here. I see it as a symbol of survival, and of our biodiverse and global heritage of garden varieties. It occurred to me during the year that vegetables divide up into groups according to their ethnic origins and by the time of year they are sown. Well sort of, so the catalogue is arranged in these groups which I have given names like the 'woodlanders' and the 'fertile crescenters'. It is a bit like the way they move all the things around in the supermarket, so that you see things you might ordinarily miss.

The Crimson Flowered Broad Bean had a good year here. It seemed perfectly happy with the the cool dry spring followed by the cool and relatively dry summer. The critical part of broad bean seed growing is when chocolate spot hits. If the leaves blackened by the fungus lie on the pods they transmit the fungus to them and the pods begin to rot marking the beans inside and in come cases causing them to rot. We harvest the plants whole, as soon as it chocolate spot hits and hang the plants up to dry. Dry weather makes it a lot easier to get the crop in without damage. It takes us about 3 square metres to grow a kg of broad bean seed and the Crimson Flowered broad bean yielded a little better than the Bowlands Beauty even though it was on a less fertile patch. That is a about 3.5T/Ha, I think.

Beef

We have beef for sale at the moment. Every year we fatten a few heifers and sell some of the beef directly from the farm. This year the heifers came from the farm of Con and Magdalena Burns in Union Hall. This is Con below, selling his potatoes at Skibbereen Farmers Market.

And this is the bunch last May.
They spend the winter in the barn, eating silage, lying on straw and making compost for the gardens at Brown Envelope Seeds.
Finally they go to Walsh's, a local abattoir and butcher.
Price list for beef collected from the farm or delivered to Skibbereen Farmer's Market:

Sides €4/kg dead weight, plus butchering €150

10kg box of beef €100 containing approximately

2 striploin steak .4kg 1 ribroast 2.0kg 1 sirloinsteak .5kg 1 stewing steak .5kg 1 roundroast 1.2kg 1 round steak .5kg 2 bags beef pieces .9kg 8 bags mince 4.0kg Price for individual pieces

Rib roasts

Fillets @ €33/kg

Striploin @ €22/kg

Sirloin @ €15.50 /kg

Round steak @ €11.80/kg

Round roas @ €11.80 /kg

Rib roasts @ €11.80/kg

Stewing steak @ €10 /kg

Stewing beef @ €10 /kg

Mince @ €10/kg