Growing potatoes under mulch

Since I had way too little dedicated growing space to grow potatoes, I had this vision of mulching a larger, still unused, patch beside one of the compost beds to grow potatoes. On this spot there used to be a very large bush of brambles, which my husband took down with a flail mower about 2 years ago. Left is a ratter bare patch with brambles growing back, little grass and mostly other weeds with a slight slope going down towards the compost bed. We have been simply mowing this patch every few weeks.

Now that we have the manure spreader we have the possibility to “easily” cover the entire area with mulch. We got 2 trailers full of the content of a horse stable, so mainly hay, straw and some horse pop. As good as it went; my husband divided it over the entire patch with some handwork to make it more evenly.

By the time we got this done the seed potatoes in our storage looked like this.

A tangled mess I would not know how to get undone without breaking all of the sprouts, after which the seed potatoes would not grow anymore. What amazes me is that the seed potatoes where already growing new potatoes.

Since we needed to dump these seed potatoes some where, we just moved some mulch aside, put the seed potatoes in there and put the mulch back.

As expected this did not do anything, but last spring I had bought some potatoes in the supermarket and did not use all on time. Some of them looked like useful seed potatoes. I also planted these seed potatoes underneath the mulch, but correctly with some space in between, setting the potato on the soil underneath the mulch. This was the beginning of July, which I normally would think as pretty late to plant potatoes, but I wanted to try it anyway.

Most of these seed potatoes grew well over summer. This picture and the picture at the beginning of the post are from the beginning of September. Good and healthy looking potato plants.

Unfortunately it took me until the second half of November to find the time to harvest these potatoes. It was hard to find where I should dig, since the potatoes had already died back completely. The potatoes on the top of the slope did very well and I actually found a few very large potatoes among more normal size once.

The potatoes at the bottom of the slope where all rotten and mush, since the rainwater has collected there and kept everything to wet. Other than that I found some seed potatoes with a bunch of fingertip size potatoes attached to them. I have no clue why they grew this way.

The worst part of being so late with digging these potatoes up is that the mice beat me to most of them. I found a whole labyrinth of mouse tunnels and some bits and pieces of left over potatoes.

I did not plant many decent seed potatoes, so I am very happy with the potatoes I was able to harvest of these few potato plants. While harvesting our geese kept me company.

These potatoes are about 4 meals worth for my family and the other potatoes we grew are already used up, so I won’t come around to buying potatoes this winter. Next year we really have to prioritize planting potatoes. We love eating them and would need a whole lot to get trough the winter without buying any.

O and I also found lots and lots of earthworms, even very large once.

To conclude I would say growing potatoes under mulch is a success and makes it a lot easier to harvest, but the excess water needs to be able to flow away. The mulch layer should be fairly thick, so the potatoes will not be exposed to the sunlight, and the seed potatoes should be put down on the soil underneath the mulch. The roots need soil to grow into. They do not do well in only mulch. Also planting potatoes in July was a great success, so I do not need to worry about planting the potatoes early in the season. I can divide planting the potatoes over a longer time frame, which is very nice. This way I can divide the work and have fresh potatoes from the garden over a very long time. Mainly I will have to prioritize harvesting the potatoes after they are done. It is easier to find the plants and know where to dig and the mice will not have eaten all of the potatoes yet.