I love new potatoes at Christmas time and now, in the Southern Hemisphere, is a good time to start preparing the soil. I dig in lots of chicken or horse manure, lime and compost and let is sit for two weeks while the seed potato's are sprouting on the kitchen window sill.
I dig trenches about 30cm deep and then wrap each potato in a wilted comfrey leaf and place in trench and then back fill. make sure the comfrey is well wilted so it dies rather than re-sprouts or else you will have a new crop of comfrey with your potato's.
This year i have several sack fulls of sheep dags and wool so I am using that as a layer in the trench. The idea being it will slowly break down releasing nutrients for the growing plants through the season.
Mound up soil around the plants several times during the growing season to encourage a bigger crop. Come Christmas time you can start 'bandicotting' which means harvesting potatoes from the growing crop without pulling up the plant.
This year i am growing Jersey Bennies and Ilam.
Interestingly the WHO recomends that all potato's fed to children should be peeled first due to the risk of contamination from residue toxins in the soil! Even a better reason to grow your own.
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