I had a friend years ago that was allergic to many things, her worst allergies were to any and all petroleum products, including fertilizer, and to all members of the grass family. She grew most of her own vegetables, of course all organic. She prepared her potato bed by sprinkling bone meal and blood meal on the ground, then covered it with about 2 inches of dry leaves, then put the potatoes where she wanted them and covered them with 12 inches of loose straw. When the potatoes had 3-5 leaves above the straw, she covered them with another 12 inches of straw. She did this ‘layering’ until the bed was about 5 feet high(every time she put straw on, of course the rain, and watering them, packed it down) when ready to harvest, she literally peeled back a layer of straw and picked up the cleanest, most perfect potatoes I have ever seen. Beautiful red skinned potatoes that tasted wonderful! Every layer of straw removed revealed another layer of potatoes! From a 4’X 10’ patch, she got enough potatoes for a family of 6 for a year! She gave me some, and several other neighbors too. She was a good friend, RIP Leonie.
Thank you for the start to finish on the crop. I know it takes a lot of planning, follow through, and persistence to make a segment which covers 75+ days. Seeing a whole season in one video is extremely useful for us to see. Also amazing to look back at the days when Jacques was not yet the superstar he is today. Many thanks for your great work. Keep it up.
Been tossing my "Oops, getting a little squishy" Farmer's Market spuds into an unused bed for several years. No rhyme or reason to my planting scheme - but super-fun to go out and dig up 'taters when I need 'em! Definitely an easy crop to grow!
I appreciate that you’re a gardener first but also a memer second. Appreciate the “lil bois” and “over 9000” moment. Bless ur soul mah man. I love that there’s finally a gardening channel that has just a lil bit of *f l a v o r*
I wish more RU-vidrs would do this longer term video format where you show the stages over time. It's a lot more engaging and entertaining. Now I'm hungry for potatoes!
A lot of people don't recognize the effort that goes into these videos, notice how his audio stays really good even when his neighbor is using a leaf blower.
@@epicgardening lmao I thought it was just me we all got it I guess also love ur vids man I just came back cause I’m bored I already watched this vid but got nothing better to do school almost done lol point is shop vac is normal in my neighborhood oh and that dude who has no grass yet insists on using a weed watcher and a lawn mower 8 times a day every day
I have your videos autoplaying and when you mentioned "Harvest Moon and StardewValley" I instantly looked up and smiled. Harvest Moon series inspired me to love gardening and take responsibility for animals that we choose to domesticate. Thanks for all the into you share, you're great :)
You inspired me to grow my own plants. I just planted St. John’s wort mugwort potatoes and lemon balm. I’m a young gardener 15 years old the plants I plant I use for medicine. Keep on inspiring the new generation to grow plants
Any tips on the lemon balm? I just started using lemon balm for anxiety and insomnia. I got 4 plants and I'm sure what to do. You're way ahead of the game. 15! I'm 58.
Ayy, same here. I got into herbs initially, but hated how fast they died. Got into pepper plants, if taken care of enough my bhut jolokia will last for 5-10 years. Got a few jalapenos, bell peppers, and even banana peppers.
This video was perfect. So well structered, explained, filmed, from start to finish. I love it. The humor was there, the quality. Thank you, seriously. Now I feel like I could actually do gardening.
Stardew Valley is my favorite game of all time, I just love it. It certainly has made me more interested in growing my own food, I'm doing a little garden on my balcony this summer.
@@rachelk4805 I can totally relate to that. I'm gonna have a little allotment garden plot this summer and I've also started to dream about my own homestead. Good luck on your journey!
Try listening to Stardew music while you tend to your lil garden if you haven't! It brings me so much joy to listen to the soundtrack as I water my plants and do garden tasks.
I so appreciate this video!!! My folks did a great job feeding a family of five with the help of a giant garden that they always planted three long rows of potatoes in. I remember how much work it was, and they stopped doing it after a rainy, rainy fall one year turned everything into soup and made harvesting impossible. Never wanted to dedicate some of my grow pots to taters because they take so danged long, and new potatoes are pretty cheap at the store. HowEVER, this method has me considering starting my own small potato patch now! Thanks so much!
Alright. I don't grow potatoes. They are cheap and abundant here in Atlantic Canada. I grow dozens of other things from apples to zucchini.........but NOW I want to find a 4' × 4' sunny patch and grow 16 potato plants. THANKS A LOT, KEVIN!!!!
I'm in Atlantic Canada too! Potatoes are cheap everywhere, it's all about the security. Potatoes have a lot of calories, so growing them is a great way to get a chunk of your necessary food intake.
Here in Texas , along with all food has gone up alot , I started planting everything this spring ,especially potatoes as here in Montgomery County, Texas a 5 pound bag is costing now $5.98 even Sam's & Costco has a limit on their 10 pound of russett baking potatoes of 2 bags per customer and they are costing $8.99 when last year they were $1.99 for a 10 pound bag, plus the fingerlings that me an my husband love are costing for a 1 1/2 pound of melody of yellow,red & purple bag just cost me $3.98 . Our meat has doubled ,we r planning on going in on a 1/2 cow & pig and splitting the cost with our older Sons, everything has went up .it's getting very scarry and also in the surrounding states & Florida. Thank you for such a great video ,I planted some on our land & some in pots ...actually tomorrow I'm planting more since we can garden year around here . God bless you & amazing video ... Josette Tharp Montgomery County, Texas 🙏🏻
Only halfway through the video and I want to run out into the yard and plant potatoes. Love the video and love how you didn't edit tripping over the potato fork!
honestly, you still could. but it's never really necessary unless you're trying to maximise your yield. The way I do it is I just plant a bunch and whenever I need potatoes, I'll dig up whatever I need, while letting the plant just sit there and do it's thing and whenever a plant starts yellowing, I'll just pull up that plant and harvest it... xD But that is mid season, if I'm going to use the potatoes very soon. If I'm going to store them long term (for use during the winter and into spring). I'll cut back the plant, let the spuds sit for a couple days and only then harvest them. then let them sit out in the open for a day before bringing them in. It's what I've been taught the potatoes need to toughen up their skin so they store better. not sure if it's true, but I do it anyways :P
LOVE your Plant Daddy shirt! My kids and husband gave me a Plant Mama pair of socks for my bday. And LOVE your videos- all of 'em. Thanks for sharing your knowledge, struggles, and triumphs with all of us!
Kevin it's so true about potatoes being easy to grow. I tried last season with some 'overrripe' potatoes leftover from my Aldi shop. Threw them in a round 60cm plastic pot filled with bagged compost and bagged, rotted manure. Mulched with sugar cane mulch. Irrigated for a spell, then turned irrigation off for ages as we had an unseasonably rainy summer. Went to empty out the pot a few weeks ago cos I wanted to move it and though it would just be filled with failed potatoes and spent growing soil. Nope! Got like 30 potatoes out of that bad boy. Can't wait to scale up next season! From Zone 9b in Australia.
I planted mine in grow bag about a month ago. they are blowing up! I'm in Houston TX so we have a really long growing season. I think I have about 2 months left. I planted and hilled them up in organic raised bed mix. They reach 2 feet tall above the soil after hilling and the potato are about a foot deep now. I'm hoping for a good harvest. I absolutely love potatoes!
Here in Idaho, we had a fantastic harvest last year. We planted Purple Viking potatoes in mid-April, 6 weeks before last frost. They were so beautiful. A marbled purple to lavender skin with White, Very crisp centers. So good. 👍. We ate them all the way into February. Wish I could show you some pictures. We waited until med Oct to harvest.
Your content is refreshing. I love gardening and growing my own vegetables! My favorite part of this video is 22:28 - 22:29 when you closed your eyes to appreciate the taste. I am a recipe developer and this is me every time I create something that hits the spot. Thanks for sharing your smashed potato recipe. I will try them out and link back to you. Cheers!
You gotta sprinkle some shredded cheese and bacon bits on the smashed potatoes about 15 minutes before they're done. Then a little dollop of sour cream to top them right before eating.
I planted my potatoes about a month ago and noticed the first sprouts out of the ground yesterday! it’s the first of the season in my new garden. Good to know that the eyes don’t need to be super developed bc I did plant some potato’s that the eyes weren’t fully sprouted as an experiment. Excited to try my home grown potato’s
You are a gardener, and you don't ever grow a big harvest. A farmer such as I will not be talking about how they love digging potatoes. Gathering eggs is easy, digging potatoes is hard work, but you are are harvesting a patch about the size of my dining table.
I love to grow potatoes! So easy and it's like finding buried treasure when you dig them up. Love your new place, Kevin. So happy for you! Bless you ❤️
Oh my god. I've always just loosely thought "yeah, i'm just a Sim up skilling here" but jees louise I adored Harvest Moon as a kid & homesteading has been the dream ever since! Mind blown haha great take away. Appreciate the content - Cheers :D
My grandparents never pulled the vines until they were almost dead. That gave those tiny potatoes you saw time to grow large enough to eat. If the plant is still green it's still feeding the tubers.
I’m trying potatoes 🥔 for the first time this year, except I’m growing them in buckets 🪣 as Home Grown Veg shows on his channel. Thanks for taking us from planting to harvest! Very encouraging!
Those taters look so good! Just planted nearly half of my gifted box of seed taters! Soooo many lol I did pretty much exactly what you did here. It was like a mash up of everything I remembered from research and RU-vid aha!
Can't get over the epicness of this video! Loved how the background changed seeing the tomato trellises go up and different things going in over the course of time… I'm growing potatoes for the first time this year, But I will be doing the container And grow bag method. Started watching you last year, and I grew my first two tomato plants. Now I've got six types of tomatoes, potatoes, two strawberries and all kinds of crazy herbs going on in my garden!
Thanks so much for showing the process from beginning to end. That helps A LOT! My 6-year old granddaughter is obsessed with digging up potatoes…this year she will be in on the planting, too. Full circle!
Really wish you would do a segment on establishing a native garden. It’s so important now from an ecological point of view. CNPS is starting a program to put identifiable safe native plants into nurseries! I have a designated part of my yard planted in natives and will continue to expand it. Every little bit helps!
Love the enthusiasm for potatoes in this video! ^.^ Last year I planted potatoes based on your previous video right before/the exact week that the pandemic lockdown hit. They were an interesting time marker for how long it had been since the start of the pandemic. I've been using potatoes as a pioneer crop to turn areas of urban lawn into a garden bed. Very glad I've followed your deeper digging methods 'cause the lawn areas I dug ended up having many fist-sized rocks in the soil that I needed to remove! It's been so annoying to find them used as fill within a foot of the surface. No wonder the lawn was patchy since we moved in, such a poor choice by the builders! If I'd gone with another starter crop, I probably wouldn't have known about the big rocks under the surface until plant growth would've stunted and it was too late!
With food shortages on the rise, I am more passionate about vegetable gardening than ever. Thanks for giving easy to understand, pleasant to watch, informative videos. ❤️
Great video as always! You know, I never thought of comparing harvesting potatoes to an Easter egg hunt but when you think about it, it's a perfect analogy! I will definitely be trying the smashed potatoes. I have a bunch of harvested garden potatoes that I haven't used yet. Waiting on my Burbank russets that are still in containers. I did an experiment where I took a poor harvest from last year (due to late planting and heat), and planted them as seed potatoes this year. Well, even the tiny marble sized ones sprouted. So we'll see what kind of harvest I get this year.
@@mistyniles333 They went pretty well. Interestingly, I started experimenting with growing potatoes from organic store bought that had started to sprout. I have had overwhelming success with those and just harvest a bunch last week. It's a bit warm in Southern California now, I may start a new bunch soon and just heavily mulch the container.
I feel like Harvest Moon definitely nurtured my love of gardening/livestock management. And until I can actually do more than containers, it still keeps me going
I love this upload since you included the behind-the-scenes of your hard work! And it's an honor to have you visit our channel, we can discuss more about our experiences in harvesting and building farms.
Oh my goodness. I planted some purple potatoes in double buckets stacked vertical inmy growroom under lights in Maine 5b like last winter, very early spring and I'm still waiting for the harvest lol. I was brought the potatoes from a farmers market and didn't realize they take a really long time to grow. No regrets though. They're lovely.
Great video, one of your best ever! Love watching the whole process, watching the garden transform tremendously, and you got a great harvest. Very cool. PS those smash potatoes don't look all that unhealthy, all that stuff is good for ya
I'm growing purple viking potatoes in 5 gallon buckets. So far they're doing great. They'll be the first crop that I successfully grow and harvest. I also planted eight muscadine grape vines as well as some fruit trees (Meiwa Kumquat, Meyer Lemon, Satsuma Mandarin Orange, Key Lime, Washington Navel Orange, Blue Java Banana and a Black Mission Fig, will add a Brown Turkey and Celeste fig into the mix soon) I also want to learn how to graft citrus trees. A long term goal of mine is to try and go an entire year on stuff I grow myself. I have the room for it and I live in zone 9A in a humid subtropical climate. Obviously that's going to be several years from now but I'll start small, like going one month at first then bumping it up as I go along. Another thing I want to do is experiment on making my garden as self-sufficient as possible. Along with my main garden, I want to make a (much) smaller garden where I can test out apocalyptic scenario methods of gardening. I imagine in the apocalypse I won't have access to all of the awesome fertilizers and products that I can find at the store, so I've been doing research on what plants make good fertilizer, what scraps I can recycle for the needs of different plants and what crops I can grow in my zone that I can easily preserve over the winter for the next planting season. Unfortunately it might be too hot here to successfully keep potatoes past spring unless I have an air conditioned room(if i have air conditioning, I'm probably not in the apocalypse). It rains too much here to have a root cellar. Sweet potatoes on the other hand grow like weeds here. Cassava and yams are also great calorie options. I'm rambling...
I just planted 5 buckets of potatoes and waiting to see what happens, I've already planted and harvested, yellow squash, baby cucumbers, now tomatoes and butternut squash are starting to grow, many herbs as well, so inspiring to grow and eat your own food.
@@idkyou3760Well, I learned what not to do.. like dont over water. And that in order to grow squash you must attract bees so they can pollinate the flowers of the plant otherwise you have to do it. So out of 5 buckets two were edible. We did eat them. I recommend small potatoes red or white for bucket growing. I have also had pretty good luck with Japanese eggplants and peppers red and yellow and green. Other then that I tried spinach but bugs keep eating the leaves and lettuce and tomatoes. Tomatoes depends on what time of year they grow pretty good too. Thanks for asking! 😊
I planted my first ever patch of Red Norland potatoes a few weeks ago, I followed the video for growing potatoes in a 5 gal bucket. Ive got some GREAT tops that came up about a week or so ago, Im excited as hell to see how they turn out
ABSOLUTELY Loved Harvest Moon when I was younger and had no land... now I have about a 1/2 acre given to my care and am excited to watch ur videos and learn.
I just moved into my childhood home, big garden thats been neglected for years, and I love watching your videos and getting inspired! Its still frosty here in good ole Norway so I'm not planting my potatoes yet, but I have cleared the perfect spot for them! Thanks for the work you put into your videos, they're so educational even if we're not even remotely in the same climate. Cheers!
And after this video am adding potatoes to my planting list..I use card box for growing garlic so I want to try potatoes in a box on a pallet ..Thank you so much for this one..It's good to eat your natural food..Thumbs up
