Kathy547's blog: Potato "Patch"

I bought a 5 pound bag of Red Pontiac seed potatoes. Some were small so I didn't cut them up but I ended up with about 45-50. The bag was something like $5.60+tax at my local feed store. I'm not sure if that's a good price or not but I'll be happy if I can get some potatoes.

I am having a hard time with my garden. My regular size tiller has been out of commission for several years so I bought one of those little mini tiller/cultivates thinking I'll use that even if it takes longer. Well now I can't ever get the darn thing to crank. It's a Southland brand. I've been wanting to find someone TRUSTWORTHY & DEPENDABLE to come out & service the rollers & both the riding & push mowers. Who would have thought that would have been so hard!!!! I don't have a truck or a trailer to haul them anywhere. So, until I find someone, I don't want to NOT have a garden. I've looked into straw bales & would love to do gardening in those but here they are about $9 each. That would be really expensive to do my whole garden. I will buy a few bales as I can but will still need something.

I've already been shopping around for containers so my husband can garden. He's on oxygen & to go outside, it has to be close enough that his tubing will reach or he has to use his portable, which he then has to have exchanged for a full tank. He also has congestive heart failure & COPD (amongst other illnesses) & tires easily. However, we do have a patio area that I'm setting up for him. I've been collecting plastic totes & buckets as I find them on the side of the road & at thrift stores.

There is a Family Dollar next to one of the grocery stores I have to stock bread in, so I decided to see if they had some large containers I could use. I've discovered those clear plastic totes do not hold up that long before they become brittle. On the aisle with laundry baskets were these rubber containers. They were only $5 each & there were only 5 so I bought them all.




I then had to make holes in the bottom for drainage so I used a crowbar & gave it a little twist to make the holes a little bigger.



I do have a large compost tumbler but I've stopped adding to it. I bought it used & there's a large rusted out place in it that I need to fix somehow so I need to empty it out.



I'm still saving my kitchen scraps in my high tech composting system.......

.....so I've been dumping them in the various containers I already had & adding soil. Repeating until there's a couple of inches up to a foot of scraps, depending on the size of the container.

I had my little bucket full & since it needed dumping anyway, I dumped it into one of my new containers. We'll see if it makes a difference.



My husband had a bread route before he became sick, & we still have tons of these trays from when the guy helping run the route DID NOT empty the truck like he was supposed to. I am always looking for uses for these. I like turning these trays over so they sit a few inches up off the ground. This allows water to drain out of the pot & then drain away from it so the pot isn't still sitting in water.



Here is the soil I bought at Atwoods. I thought it might be pretty good soil but still had this huge bag of perlite I had gotten a few weeks ago. So I mixed it & hope it drains good.




I read somewhere to sprinkle cinnamon on your potato pieces so I dumped a cheap bottle in a Ziploc & threw a few in the bag, shook it to coat them. I think this is to keep pests away.




Once the plants start growing, I'll add compost & soil.

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