The Modern Victory Garden

Each Monday, Daphne’s Dandelions hosts “Harvest Monday” where everyone submits links to their blog posts summarizing their harvest for the week.   It’s fun to see what people are producing from gardens from so many different regions, and how they are using it.   Check it out and join in!         

We have had a weather warm up this past week and the tomatoes responded by kicking up the production of ripe fruit.    The warm up has also caused the pumpkins to set more fruit, but it is unlikely they will make it to maturity since it is so late in the season.   However, if we continue to get a warmer and drier than average fall there is at least some hope that a few of the larger ones will make it to the finish line.  

On Monday I harvested a couple of rather ugly (but tasty!) tomatoes, three zucchini (there is another one in that picture underneath the big one), and a leek.        

The tomatoes were placed on the counter to finish ripening up.   The largest of the three zucchini was given away to a friend at work who had asked me to bring her some.   The rest of the zucchini, some ripe tomatoes already on my counter, and the leek were used to make a hamburger and Spanish rice dish for Monday night's dinner – with chopped up zucchini and tomatoes which made it a one dish meal and gave it lots of nice color.                 

Thursday evenings harvest included several tomatoes, several ears of corn, and a couple of cucumbers.              

The tomatoes went on the counter to finish ripening up and the cucumbers went into the fridge to wait for enough other cukes to be harvested to be sufficient for a batch of dill pickle relish.   The corn was part of Thursday night’s dinner.             

On Saturday, I did the annual potato patch dig and lift.   The vegetation had almost entirely died back on the patch.   Here’s how the bed looked when I got started. 

And here is how it looked when I finished.                     

I worked all afternoon to get this project completed, as we wanted to keep our Sunday free so we could spend it at Point No Point beach enjoying the sunshine, sea air, surf, and watching the fisherman on the point and the ships sailing by through the channel.   When I finished up late in the afternoon, I had harvested almost 60 pounds of potatoes.                

While this is certainly a respectable harvest and more than enough for our winter needs it was disappointing nonetheless, because I had pulled twice that amount from the adjacent same-sized bed last year.   The only difference year to year was our abnormally cool summer, which seems to have had a profound impact on so many of the 2011 crops.   The potatoes were put in ventilated cardboard boxes with shredded paper in the bottom and then stored away in our cool and dark garage.   The garage is slightly damp and always cool but never goes below freezing thanks to a space heater that kicks on when temps get close to freezing.   As a result, it is a great storage location for our annual potato supply.                   

After the potatoes were harvested on Saturday, I also harvested the last of the corn and some spinach for dinner that night.    We had grilled steaks, corn on the cob, baked potatoes, and a large spinach salad topped with cranberry raisins, glazed walnuts, and goat cheese crumbles.   Yum!            

Sunday was largely spent at the beach, but when we got home I harvested a bunch of tomatoes, some beans, a little basil (did not make it into a picture), and some blackberries.   I forgot to take a picture of the beans until after I had already started prepping them for dinner!              

The tomatoes went on the counter to finish ripening.   These combined with a few from earlier in the week and few more yet to be picked should give me enough tomatoes to do a batch of pint jars of diced tomatoes this coming week.   I also have several whole tomatoes that I have been tossing into the freezer – accumulating them until I have enough to do a batch of sauce.   The berries were just placed on the counter for snacking.   The beans were cooked and tossed with some butter and a sprinkle of salt and then served alongside some ravioli with a creamy garlic, basil, and Parmesan sauce for the Sunday evening meal.             

Harvest totals for the week of September 5th through September 11th (rounded to the nearest ¼ pound).

• Beans 1.25 lbs
• Berries 0.25 lbs
• Corn 2.25 lbs
• Cucumbers 0.25 lbs
• Herbs (basil) 0.00 lbs (not enough to round up to ¼ lb)
• Onions/Leeks 0.25 lbs
• Potatoes 58.50 lbs
• Spinach 0.25 lbs
• Tomatoes 8.75 lbs
• Zucchini 1.75 lbs

Total For Week 73.50 lbs

Total Year To Date 297.00 lbs                             

Eggs collected this week – 25                       

Laura

kitsapfreedomgardener

Friday gave us some periodic sunshine and the high temperature rose up close to our normal levels for this time of year.   It was a brief break in the series of storm systems that have been pummeling us for weeks on end.   In fact, even though we got some sun on Friday there was still a fair amount of clouds present and so our region continues on its long streak of technically non-sunny days.   It has been 41 days since our area last had what qualifies as an official sunny day, which is defined as 30% or less cloud cover through the day.   The last day that qualified was February 25, which happened to occur at the same time that we had a deep arctic freeze hit our area (winter’s last hurrah!).   Unfortunately, the next week or so forecast does not give any hope that we will break this current non-sunny streak.     Recognizing this, I took advantage of this little break in the weather and took Friday off from work so that I could get the potato patch planted up on Friday and Saturday before the rains returned on Sunday.                    

Last year I used the John Jeavon’s method of planting potatoes, which essentially has you plant potatoes as you double dig a garden bed.   The seed potatoes are placed 9 inches apart on the loosened soil at the bottom of the trenches created.   I made a potato planting board last year that is 4 feet long and has marks on it to help denote where to put the potatoes.  The planting board makes a good standing board for the digging process as well, keeping the soil from becoming deeply compacted while I work my way down the bed double digging.   The potatoes end up being buried about 9 inches or more deep and require no further hilling throughout the growing season.   They have loose amended soil above them, which provides a great growing medium for the tubers to develop.   The seed potatoes are planted 9 inches apart and with less than 12 inches between rows/trenches - so the spuds are densely planted making optimal use of the growing bed.   It produced really good yields for me last year and I ended up with a garden bed that was refreshed by the double dig.   

For 2011, I will once again be using the John Jeavon's method.   This year’s bed is right next to last year’s bed and is longer in length by an additional 8 feet – measuring 4’X40’.   At first I was going to do the entire bed in potatoes but after thinking about it more, I determined to keep the potato patch at the same size as last year ( 4’X32’ ) and just use the remaining two 4’X4’ sections for other crops.   Our harvest from the 2010 patch has been just about perfect for us in that we are still using the stored potatoes but should be done with them about the time they start getting too shriveled and sprouted to be usable.   We have been eating on them since last fall and it has been an abundant supply.   Growing a larger amount would likely just result in waste as I do not think we could eat any more then we have been doing.                                      

I prepared the bed by placing a layer of compost and broadcasting a layer of bone meal over the entire surface area.     I then began the double dig process by removing the soil from the first trench and placing it into a wheelbarrow.     This soil is used at the very end to fill in the final trench.     To do the digging you use a good garden spade and stand on a board to distribute your weight – to avoid overly compacting the soil in the bed as you work.   A garden fork is then used to dig into the bottom of the trench and loosen the soil, similar to the process you use when using a broad fork to aerate a bed.   Because these beds have been previously double dug (almost five years ago now!) I skipped adding any amendments in the trench bottom before loosening the soil.  The intent is not to turn over the soil at the bottom of the trench but to loosen and aerate it.   The seed potatoes are then laid out in the bottom of the trench and you begin the process all over with the next trench, placing the soil dug from the next trench into the first one dug to fill it.   You repeat this process all the way to the end of the planting area.                              

I broke this job up into two days (Friday and Saturday) and took lots of breaks as I was working on it.   Double digging is always hard work and this was a very large bed.   Pacing myself with this kind of work avoids overstraining my back.   I must have done it right because as of Sunday I am feeling just fine and am none the worse for wear.                          

The remaining 4’X8’ section of the potato patch bed was aerated with a broadfork and cultivated with a hoe to mix the amendments into the top few inches of soil and then raked smooth.    I then direct seeded a 4’X4’ section in carrots and another 4’X4’ section in beets.   I used my 4-inch planting jig to do those two plantings.   I could have used a smaller spaced jig for the carrots but opted to give these carrots more room than I usually do.         

Saturday was definitely more gloomy and cloudy than Friday but it stayed dry the entire day and I got done what I set out to do for the day.   The older section of garden is now largely planted up.            

I still have the vertical grow bed and the retaining wall bed to plant up, but otherwise this section of the garden is planted for the start of the growing season.   The brief bit of sunshine on Friday woke the pea patch up.   They had germinated but had stalled out for quite a few days due to the colder than normal temperatures but the sunshine and little bit of warmer temperatures on Friday spurred them into emerging fully.   The bed has a definite five o’clock shadow of green sprouts now.                        

I moved most of the tomato plants out to the greenhouse this weekend to begin their gradual hardening off process.   Later this week, I will begin moving them outside for periods of time and gradually increase the amount of time they spend out of doors.   They will be ready to go into the ground (with protective cover) around the 23rd of April or later.                     

I am glad to get the potato patch in for the season. It’s one of the bigger planting chores of the year but vital to our annual food supply.                

Laura

kitsapfreedomgardener

Harvest Monday                 

Each Monday, Daphne’s Dandelions hosts “Harvest Monday” where everyone submits links to their blog posts summarizing their harvest for the week.   It’s fun to see what everyone else is harvesting from gardens in so many different regions.   Check it out and join in!                   

The weather this week has been a mixture of heavy rain and periods of high winds – creating an extremely blustery and soggy environment in the outdoor garden area.   It let up for a few hours on Friday morning which was fortunate, as the fencing contractor was out that morning to set the posts for our new cross fencing project.   No sooner had they wrapped up and left for the day then the rain started up again.   The concrete that the posts are set in needs to cure and set for several days, so the fencing will not be completed for at least another week.   Hopefully the weather will lighten up a bit by then.   The greens growing in the greenhouse are doing okay since they have protection from the driving wind and rain.   The napa cabbage growing in the unheated greenhouse are showing signs they would like to bolt, which is likely a result of the hard freeze period we had in February.   I have lots more coming along under the grow lights, so I intend to just harvest these as young leaves and not bother trying to get them to head up properly.   The subsequent plantings will have a better chance of growing to maturity without bolting.   Saturday I harvested quite a lot of the young napa cabbage leaves, plus some young bok choy leaves and kale.            

Harvest totals for the week of March 7th through March 13th (rounded to the nearest ¼ pound).

• Lettuce & Greens 0.25 lbs

Total For Week 0.25 lbs

Total Year To Date 11.25 lbs                          

Eggs harvested this week – 37                             

Seed Starting Progress Report                  

With the weather as foul as it has been lately, the garden focus has had to remain indoors for the most part.   On Sunday, I pulled the boxes of seed potatoes from the garage where they have been stored through the winter months and brought them inside where it is warmer to encourage sprouting.    Usually I do that at the beginning of March but this year the weather has been so miserable that I am clearly going to have to postpone the potato planting process by at least two weeks.   The soil is just too soggy and cold to consider doing it anytime soon.   There was one large box of Russet Burbank seed potatoes and two smaller boxes of the Caribe and Yukon Gold seed potatoes.   The Caribe potatoes are an earlier maturing variety and consequently are already starting to sprout.   If you look closely at the following picture of the Caribe seed potatoes you can spot some nice sprouts already formed.                                  

The Russet Burbank is a later maturing variety and they are showing little or no sign of sprouting so far.                         

I put all three boxes of seed potatoes in the back office area with the lids open and next to a window that gets indirect sunlight.   The increased warmth and light should encourage more sprout development over the next few weeks.   If all goes well, they will all be ready for planting up around the end of March.        

I did another major round of seedling shuffling Friday to free up space for another large round of seed starting. On Saturday I started:

• Two 6-packs of lettuce - Super Gourmet Blend
• Two 6-packs of lettuce - Valmaine (Cos/Romaine)
• Two 6-packs of lettuce - Bon Vivant Blend
• Two 6-packs of basil - Mammoth Sweet
• One 6-pack - Ssuk Gat
• One 6-pack - Red Shiso
• Two 6-packs - napa cabbage – Tenderheart
• Two 6-packs - Pac Choi
• Two 6-packs - Bok Choy
• Two 6-packs - swiss chard - Bright Lights
• Two 6-packs - savoy cabbage – Alcosa
• Two 6-packs - kale – Beira
• Two 6-packs - kale - Toscano (dinosaur kale)

I also potted up to larger containers the second round of tomato seedlings on Saturday.                 

Part of my seedling reorganization on Friday included my moving the overflow light fixture set up from the shop to the back bedroom in the house so that it would benefit from the greater warmth of our living area. The main bank of lights and heat mat are still in the shop but the secondary light set up is now inside.   Some of the seedlings previously started are located there and some are out in the greenhouse.   On Sunday morning, I bottom watered several flats of seedlings and did a bit of thinning on the celery and a few of the later started tomatoes.   They were all moved to the bench in front of the house while they soaked up water and I took the opportunity to take a few pictures of them.                         

There are in these planting flats - cabbages, swiss chard, kale, young tomatoes, broccoli, pac choi, napa cabbages, lettuces, celery, peppers, and some artichokes that are just poking up out of the soil.   These are only the very youngest of the tomato seedlings.   The vast majority of them are repotted already into bigger containers and are growing in the overflow light set up area.   Here are just a few of them:                     

Everything seems to be coming along well.   I have one more big round of seed starting to do in about two or three weeks, which will be the cucurbit family plants – cucumbers, zucchini, pumpkins, winter squash, and melons. 

How is your seed starting going?                    

Laura

kitsapfreedomgardener

Each Monday, Daphne’s Dandelions hosts “Harvest Monday” where everyone submits links to their blog posts summarizing their harvest for the week.   It’s fun to see what everyone else is harvesting from gardens in so many different regions. Check it out and join in!

This week’s harvest was dominated by the big potato patch lift.   You can check out the video of the harvest in the blog post just prior to this one.   I did not get pictures of all the harvests, but here is most of them.            

Harvest totals for the week of September 6th through September 12th (rounded to the nearest ¼ pound).    

• Beans (Runner/Pole) 1.25 lbs
• Cucumbers 2.00 lbs
• Peppers 1.00 lbs
• Potatoes 147.00 lbs
• Spinach 0.50 lbs
• Tomatoes 1.50 lbs
• Zucchini 3.25 lbs

Total For Week 156.50 lbs

Total Year To Date 348.25 lbs    

Eggs harvested this week - 31  

Laura

kitsapfreedomgardener

Saturday I lifted the potatoes from the 4-foot by 32-foot bed they have been growing in.   As many of you know, I used the John Jeavon’s method of planting potatoes this year and was anxious to do the final dig and weighing to see if I improved my yield per square foot of planting area used.   Last year (using the trenching method) I got a total of 120 lbs from two beds that combined had a total square footage of 208.   This computes to a yield of 0.58 lbs per square foot.   This year (using the John Jeavon’s method of planting potatoes) I got a total of 170.25 lbs in one growing bed that had a square footage of 128.   This computes to a yield of 1.33 lbs per square foot!   I more than doubled the yield per square foot by using this planting method.   It has other benefits too, in that the bed is double dug and amended well in the spring and once planted you pretty much just leave them alone other than watering and slug removal etc. until you are ready to harvest.   Here’s a short video of the dig process and results.                           

Laura

kitsapfreedomgardener

It’s the middle of August and I have a tomato patch filled with lots of GREEN tomatoes.

The Siletz tomatoes growing in containers have been providing some occasional ripe tomatoes but even these have slowed way down recently due to a prolonged spell of rainy and cool weather.   Luckily, the weather has warmed back up today and is forecasted to stay that way for at least a four-day period, so there is some hope that the Siletz will begin ripening up again soon and that the green tomatoes might move along towards ripening as well.   It is worrisome though that we are so far into the summer season and this far behind on the tomato crop.   The tomato plants are starting to show signs of age and disease as they are want to do late in the summer season.   On various plants there is leaf curling, on yet others some lower leaf yellowing, and the Siletz tomatoes have some grey mold and fungus problems.   In an effort to keep the diseases at bay for as long as possible and encourage the plants to shift energy into fruit ripening, I did a hard prune on the large tomato patch today. 

This is the patch as I was just getting started on the pruning this morning.   I had removed the yellowed and blotchy looking leaves from the lower portion of two of the Early Girls.                          

I worked my way down the bed removing problem looking leaves and stems, and cutting the growing tips off of the tall vines so that they would quit growing skyward and perhaps put more plant energy into the fruit ripening process.   I wiped my garden snips with disinfectant often and washed my hands with antibacterial soap and water frequently as well – so as not to spread potential diseases or fungus problems from plant to plant.   Here’s how it looked when I finished. 

After I was done with the pruning work, I watered all of the tomatoes thoroughly because the weather is indeed going to be quite warm for a few days.   The combination of pruning, deep watering, and a really warm sunny day – seemed to perk the patch up tremendously.                           

This is the time of year where the potato patch starts looking really awful as it goes into the vegetation die back phase.   The earlier maturing potatoes are further along in the die off process than the later maturing Russet Burbank, but all of them are withering down at this point and in about three weeks, they will be ready for the big lift of the potatoes for storage.                           

While most of the garden crops have been really late this year, the potatoes are actually right on schedule.   My initial digs into the patch for fresh eating potatoes has been quite encouraging.   I think the John Jeavon’s planting method I used this year is going to prove quite productive, but only the final big harvest and weigh in will tell.                               

In the previous picture you may have noticed a large patch of beans growing to the left of the potato patch.   That is the patch of Dark Red Kidney beans and they are coming along nicely.                                      

The purple podded bush beans are producing now too and I picked a nice large colander of them today which I later blanched and then froze.   Picked a few more yellow zucchini to add to my growing pile of zucchinis in the fridge as well.             

I am getting a few cucumbers off and on now too.   Not enough to do anything serious with but I have been slicing them up and dropping them into the refrigerator dill pickle solution and gobbling them up almost immediately afterwards!    

I am hoping to do some berry picking at a local u-pick farm tomorrow - to freeze for our winter use.   We have strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries ripening on our home plants, but they are getting eaten as fast as they ripen and never even make it into the house for weighing.   Its going to be a hot one tomorrow so we will be getting it done early before it gets too hot to be out picking.   It’s a good thing they do not weigh us before and after we do the picking as I think we end up eating almost as much as we take home every year!                       

Keep Cool                  

Laura

kitsapfreedomgardener

Each Monday, Daphne’s Dandelions hosts “Harvest Monday” where everyone submits links to their blog posts summarizing their harvest for the week.   It’s fun to see what everyone else is harvesting from gardens in many different regions.       

This week I harvested the last of the spring planted broccoli (all side shoot production), the first Russet Burbank potatoes, swiss chard, lettuce, onions, a couple of tomatoes, and lots of zucchini.   I also harvested some sugar snap peas, which will be the last from these plants as I am now letting them set seed.   I did not get pictures of all the harvests, but here is a good portion of them.    

Harvest totals for the week of July 26th through August 1st (rounded to the nearest ¼ pound).

• Broccoli 0.50 lbs
• Lettuce 0.25 lbs
• Onions 0.50 lbs
• Peas (sugar snap) 0.25 lbs
• Potatoes 2.25 lbs
• Swiss Chard 1.00 lbs
• Tomatoes 0.75 lbs
• Zucchini 6.25 lbs

Total For Week 11.75 lbs

Total Year To Date 115.00 lbs                       

Laura

kitsapfreedomgardener

Friday night, I made the first exploration dig into the potato patch.   The Yukon Gold potato plants have begun to flop over and are starting to show signs they want to die back soon so I expected that the Yukon Gold potatoes were further along than probably the rest of the varieties were.   With the exception of the Yukon Golds (which are in the very front portion of this next picture), the potato patch is lush and still standing upright despite the very tall vegetation on these plants.          

And here is what I harvested from one plant of the Yukon Gold.   I think this is a good harvest considering it was only one plant. I diced these up, drizzled  them with olive oil and sprinkled on some herbs and salt – tossed them to coat evenly and then roasted them until tender and just crisped.   Nice to have potatoes back on the menu again.                              

Today I tackled several garden tasks including:

• Planting some carrots (Bolero) and kale (Fizz) in beds recently opened up with the harvest of lettuces and some cabbages
• Thinned the short rows of turnips
• Thinned the trays of seedlings down to a single plant per cell
• Watered the strawberries, several seedbeds, lettuces, cucumbers, and the bed with zucchini and paste tomatoes
• Pastured the chickens for several hours and kept an eye on them while I worked in the garden
• Layered on finished compost as mulch on the kale patch and the cranberries
• Pulled all the garlic up and laid it out to dry on the side deck area

Here’s the tray of seedlings before I thinned them down to one plant per cell using a small pair of sharp scissors to cut away the extra plants.               

And here it is after I finished the thinning process.   They will perk up and grow much stronger without the crowding and competition.               

I did the garlic pull today because the leaves were yellowing and the elephant garlic was lying over.   I have not weighed these yet as I want to wait until the tops dry down and are removed before I do.                              

The weather is warming up a bit and the three sisters planting seems to be doing better this past week as a result.                         

The pumpkins are running and are even setting fruit now.           

The pea patch is loaded with pods - many of which are almost ready for harvest.                                              

The sugar snap peas are producing well now too.                  

The bush beans (Royal Burgundy) look like they are half runner beans to me.   Behind them are the real pole beans (Blue Lake) but the bush beans are putting out just as strong a central climbing vine as the pole beans?   This is a new variety for me so I am not sure what to expect.                   

The broccoli patch is so dense with foliage that I have been stripping some of the lower leaves and feeding them to the chickens and yet it still has a thick bunch of vegetation.   They are producing some good heads now and lots of side shoots.   Planning to make my first broccoli harvest of the year tomorrow. 

The zucchini patch is thriving and is producing harvestable sized zukes.    

I harvested two of them this afternoon and used them (thinly sliced) as part of the toppings of a homemade pizza for dinner.                        

Since it is a long holiday weekend, I have two more days to putter around in the garden, which makes me quite happy!   The garden is getting busier now and I could use the extra time to get caught up on routine tasks.   I will not be spending all of my time in the garden though, as we will be doing a traditional barbeque dinner tomorrow and watching fireworks with much of the rest of the nation to celebrate Independence Day.    Happy Fourth of July!              

Laura

kitsapfreedomgardener

I am off from work this week and alternating some days spent at home and in the garden with some days away doing fun things with my family.   Had some commitments this morning to keep but spent the afternoon working in the garden.   The broccoli (Premium Crop) and the swiss chard (Bright Lights) seedlings needed to be transplanted out.   I have been hardening them off for the past several days and they were definitely ready to go into the ground.               

I did a quick cultivation and raking of the soil in the bed area to be planted and then used a stick to mark out a grid of 1-foot spaces in an area 5 feet long by 4 feet wide.             

The broccoli plants (20 of them) were then transplanted into the bed and copper collars for slug management were placed around the stems.   These were then watered well and given some protection by putting the grow tunnel cover back up over the bed.         

The swiss chard seedlings (16 of them) were similarly planted up in an 8-foot section of the largest vertical grow bed.                                           

After lunch I got started on the big 2010 potato experiment.   I have been growing potatoes successfully for some time now in raised boxed edge beds using a trenching method.   This trenching method produces a reliable harvest but also wastes valuable growing real estate with the wide spacing between trenches.   The yields I have been getting are good but not superior and I have decided to up my game this year with the potato patch and see if I can significantly increase my harvest amounts per 100 square feet.   I already know my trenching method equals or exceeds the bin, furrow, and heavy mulching methods for production, so I am not going to waste time reverting back to any of those methods.   What I have decided to do instead is give the John Jeavon's method a try.   This entails doing a double dig and planting the potatoes on top of the loosened soil at the bottom of each trench and then covering it with the soil from the next trench to be dug.   The seed potatoes are buried much more deeply right from the beginning (approximately 9 inches or more) but in really loose soil resulting from the double dig.   You do not hill or add more layers, which is appealing in that once planted it is a relatively no fuss method of planting.   The initial planting is more work though since you are double digging the bed as you go.   If the bed has been previously double dug then it really should be fairly easy work.

Before I get too much further in describing this I must post a disclaimer – I have never used this method and do not know anyone personally who has ever done this.   I would encourage anyone interested in this to watch how this goes for me first before committing yourself in any fashion to planting this way.   I am willing to gamble a bit and just dive in and do it because the basic methodology makes good sense to me and is in keeping with the other biointensive methods I employ.   However, I don’t want anyone to think that this is a tried and true method for me because it is not.     I am taking a calculated gamble that this will work and feel fairly confident that it will, however there is the niggling worry about the potato shoots having to grow such a long ways before finally breaking through the surface of the soil.    Disclaimer completed, I will get on with describing how this works!  

The potatoes are planted with a spacing of 9 inches between them.   The next row over is approximately nine inches from the first and the spuds are offset from the prior row to create a diamond pattern.   A while ago I made a planting board for this purpose - which has spacing marked at 9 inch intervals on one edge, and the same intervals marked on the other edge but offset.                                 

The bed was prepared last weekend by placing rock minerals (rock phosphate and greensand), organic all purpose fertilizer, and compost on the surface of the entire bed.   To get started with the planting today I needed a garden spade, a garden fork, a garden rake, the planting board, a standing board (to distribute weight and minimize the soil compaction in the bed while double digging), and a wheelbarrow to hold the soil removed from the first trench.                      

Standing on the board, I use the spade to remove soil across the width of the bed, creating a trench that is approximately as wide as the spade and as deep.      

The soil from this first trench is placed in the wheelbarrow and set aside to be used at the very last step to fill in the final trench.                   

The garden fork is then used to loosen the soil at the bottom of the trench by digging into the soil and lifting.   Since this bed has been double dug before the soil is not that compacted and the digging was relatively easy to do.   It’s been four years now since I originally double dug this bed and I am encouraged by the good tilth and quality of the soil in the bed.              

The planting board is laid next to the trench and seed potatoes are then placed in the bottom of the trench to line up with the marks on the board.    

The planting board is then reversed so it is ready for the next trench.   Standing on the board again, the next trench is then dug with the soil being placed into the first trench.                                               

The bottom of that trench is again loosened using the fork and then the planting board is placed next to it and the seed potatoes are again put into the bottom of the trench.     Because the board was reversed, the potatoes are placed in an alternating pattern to the first trench’s potato placement.       

The process is then repeated for the third and each subsequent trench until you are completed.                           

I have a 32 foot bed that I am planting up in potatoes and to avoid undue stress on my back, I am pacing myself with the planting process.   Today I completed an 8-foot section of the bed or 1/4th of it.   I used a rake to smooth and level the soil over the bed sections I had completed.              

A side benefit of this method is that the planting bed is given a rejuvenating double dig in the process.  This picture does not do full justice to the quality and texture of the soil in this bed - it is really outstanding.                       

I will be working on this periodically over the remainder of the week to get this planting up process completed.   Then, as the growing season progresses, I will provide updates on how this is going.   Hopefully this will work as described - but if not, then I will have to resort to purchasing potatoes for one year.   Would not be happy about that but it would not be the end of the world either.   Wish me luck!