âSo you plant the potatoes say, around a hill where you're going to put the pumpkin seed/plant?â
Here is what I do. My garden doesnât start until mid April because of the wet soil. About one week into April, Iâll till the garden with a tiller to loosen the ground. Potatoes need loose ground. Iâll let that set a week to harden up the top layer. The next thing Iâll do is plow my trenches to plant the potatoes. Instead of getting down on your hands and knees, there is a much more faster and FUN way to do this. Go to a local action or machinery show where they sell this old crap. Buy a small walking plow. They usually consist of a wheel and small plow behind thatâ¦and of course handles. I got mine for $16 but if you are somewhere out in California where people just want to put an antique in their home, I could see them going over 100...maybe 200. Weâre not talking the kind pulled by two draft horses, just a small, easy to handle plow. A lot of Amish around here so this stuff is everywhere here.
If you live out in the country, I assume you probably have some kind of yard of sorts, a large one at that, and thus I am assuming you may have a riding lawnmower. Take the deck (blades) off and now you have a perfect size tractor for small to medium sized organic lots! Pretty much self explanatory with the tractor and plow. Get your misses to drive while you plow. This rigging works excellent. If you donât have a tiller, just plow in such a way that the dirt from the trench you are plowing now falls into the trench you just dug. All it takes is some common sense to figure out how to plow in that way. Once I have all the potatoes planted, I plant my four pumpkin vines in the center of the lot at the corners of a 7x7 square. From here, each vine is directed out to grow into itâs corresponding corner. Pumpkins and potatoes are all harvested in mid August. The idea to plant potatoes among vine crops is because there is not need to weed. Weeding would be very difficult to do anyways.
Now to get those potatoes out of the ground. Please donât tell me you use a pitch fork. This job requires another kind of small walking plow called a potato plow. Youâll know it when you see it for it doesnât cut trough dirt but lifts it then spreads it to the sides (key word here being âliftsâ). Hook this up to your lawn mower and you just saved yourself hours of back breaking work. Through a twist of events, I got mine for practically free.
Sometimes you see old timers with a crap load of machinery just sitting in their yard and their fields havenât been tended to for years. Just go up to the house and ask to roam around to see if you might want to buy something. The guy probably needs the money and could care less if something that has been sitting in his field for the past twenty years is now gone.
Tater,
How much did those weigh? I know if you take them to a place where they bag and sell grain, they have the scales for such measurements.