Straw Bale Potato Harvest 2023 I POTATO HARVEST I STRAW BALES 

I just couldn’t help singing, one potato, two potato, three potato four while watching this

Ooh I’m so excited to try this!! Now I gotta get Eric to help find me a spot to stick my square bales of straw to plant in!

I like potatoes lol

Nice .. I got to see these bales for real.

Enjoyed 😀👍👍

My brother just lays the potatoes out on top of freshly worked soil in the garden and then rolls out a straw round bale on top of them, then wets it down well. So the potatoes just grow on top of the ground and up through the straw and he has had really good luck. He has an excellent wind break / shelter belts around his garden though so that helps to keep the straw in place. Our garden is very exposed on a large prairie flat where we get a lot of wind so planting the potatoes the old fashioned way, in the ground, works best for us. We use an antique potato picker to dig ours up and it works great. We shoot for 600-800lbs every year. Thanks for sharing your experiment.

Awesome job Troy!! Thanks for all the tips!!!! We tried this once and it didn’t work out so well but it makes sense about the moisture and decomposition! Will be trying this in the spring.

With the cost of the round bales topping $120. And the lack of rainfall probably not a good idea for Texas. Very interesting idea.

I can buy some square bales this fall and they should decompose enough to plant in next spring, Thanks for the experiment

I love experiments, you may be right about the moisture, just change one thing at a time to see exactly what is helpful and what is not. What we learn so far? A. Let the bail sit and rot for a year B. Don't plant in a dry bail C. Add soil on top of the bail to help with the organics and moisture retention.

Thanks for the pointers. I'm going to have to give it a try! I wonder if thickness of the bale would change the output as well.

Troy, what do you think about pre-loading the bales with moisture? I'm talking about each time it snows just shovel a huge pile on top of them and let it trickle down into the center of the bale as it warms.

10lbs? Was that whole potatoes? Or just the cutout with the eyes?