The way I see it, there are three components in the no-dig system:

• Isolation
• Nutrition
• Protection

Isolation

You can set up a no-dig garden on virtually any level surface… a growing (or not growing) lawn, concrete… any non-toxic level surface.

The first layers isolate the surface below from the surface above.

You can optionally start with dark plastic. If your surface has growth – weeds or lawn – the dark plastic “turns out the light (sun)”, prevents water from getting to the area directly, decreases oxygen and increases heat. Basically… smothers, burns and dries up any growth underneath.
If you’re setting up on concrete, you don’t need to be concerned about below surface growth.

The next two layers are cardboard and newspaper. Best to remove tape and labels from the cardboard and to use only black ink newspaper. You can use one or both of these. Both will suppress any below surface growth. They also compost/decompose over time. While they don’t add nutrients, they’re worm friendly.

Nutrition

You’ve isolated the garden, now you want to create a nutritious growing medium to feed your plants.

The first layer in this component is generally alfalfa or lucerne hay. Alfalfa is high in calcium. Blood meal adds high nitrogen. Bone meal adds phosphorus.

Compost or well rotted manure add primary and secondary macro and micro nutrients as well as microbes and good bacteria which feed the composting process.

Protection

Your top layer is straw. Straw holds moisture in, keeps weeds down.

No related posts.

The argument against growing potatoes is:
they’re cheap to buy, not worth growing (unless you have somewhat unlimited growing space).
The argument for growing spuds is:
Ahh, they taste so good fresh out of the garden. And a secondary argument is you can choose many different varieties that you wouldn’t otherwise be able to buy.

Being that we’re in a bit of a transition with our garden, I figured I’d use some otherwise non-productive space and grow some potatoes.

I’m not very timely or completely prepared, but I don’t have much downside here so what the heck.

We’re in zone 9 in the San Francisco area. It get’s a bit chilly during the winter, but it doesn’t get cold (relatively speaking).

Potatoes don’t fair well in the cold. The typical growing season is get them in the ground early-late spring (after the last frost) and harvest them early-late fall (before the first frost).

Depending on the variety, you have a grow time of 70-140 days. I’ll be using mid-season varieties which means my harvest time on these will be in the January – March time frame. (Which may just remind and inspire me to get another crop back in the ground right away.)

Optimal potato growing conditions

– Potatoes like sun, but not directly and not intensely. The potato root itself – which forms the tuber – doesn’t want any direct sun exposure. Potato plants prefer low 50’s (degrees Fahrenheit) at night and under the mid-80’s during the day.

– Whereas most plants grow and “fruit” above ground, spuds fruit underground. So they like loose, loamy soil over hard, clay soil.

– Spuds prefer slightly alkaline soil – pH: 5.0 – 6.5.

– Potatoes like Phosphorus (P) and Potassium (K), but aren’t very Nitrogen (N) loving. So if you’re fertilizing you want a low N and high P & K. Potash, fish emulsion and seaweed make good fertilizers. If you’re using manures, they should be well rotted.

Potato seeding process

You can buy certified seed potatoes. This will ensure they’re insect and disease free.

Or, you can live on the wild side and seed your own. I’d start with organic potatoes. You won’t need many.
Potato roots grow from the “eyes” or buds of a potato.
For seeds, you’re going to cut up the potato into pieces. Optimally, you want 2-3 eyes per piece. Each piece is your potato “seed”.

Potato seeds ready to go

My tray of potato seeds are a bunch of mostly quite small potatoes we found in one of our boxes that we rehabbed. While digging out all the soil we found a few left overs hiding in there from the spring. They’ve been sitting in a closet for a month or so and – as you can see – some of them have sprouted.

You want to sit your cut potatoes out, cut side up, for 1-3 days in room temperature to give them a chance to dry out a little. Otherwise they may get mouldy when planted. I cut these this morning and plan to plant them this weekend.

It takes 2-3 weeks for potatoes to germinate.

Planting potatoes

There are actually quite a few methods of growing potatoes. First I’ll cover the more typical followed by the less typical.

The two typical ways are in hills and in trenched rows.

The hill method: Create short mounds spaced 12″-24″ apart. In each mound bury 3 potato seeds 3-4″ deep. The potato seed should be cut side down/root side up. As the plant grows continue to mound dirt up around the stem, leaving only the leaves exposed.

The trenched row method: Trench down about 6″, plant one seed every 12″. Cover the seeds with 3-4″ of dirt. As with the hill method, continue to add dirt as the plant grows. Rows should be spaced 2-3′ apart.

Keep the potatoes fairly well watered until the plants blossom. Then cut back on the water.

Potato crops should be rotated every year to prevent disease.

Trash cans and tires

There are other ways to grow potatoes…
Scandanavians typically grow potatoes in stacks of straw. Simple. Lay down potato seeds on a bed of straw, cover with a couple inches of straw and continue to cover with straw as it grows.

A modification to that is to put the seed in soil and cover with straw.

Grab a trash can or similar container. Cut a few holes in the bottom for drainage. Put in a base of soil, 8-12″ deep and bury the seeds 3″ into it. Again, as it grows, cover with soil or straw.

Have some old tires sitting around? Lay a tire down, fill with soil, bury seeds 3″ down. As the plants grow, add tires and soil.

How about a simple garbage bag? Sure. Same as above… bury seeds 3″ down in 8-12″ of soil, add more soil as the plants grow. Make sure you cut a few holes near the bottom for drainage.

It’s pretty much the same process regardless of your container… bury the seeds 3″ under and continue to cover the stalk as it grows.

Potato harvesting

When the plant flowers have browned and died down, your spuds are ready. You can harvest “new potatoes” ahead of this. And you can leave potatoes in the ground longer than this. But you should get them out of the ground before a frost.

Harvesting depends a bit on how you grew them. If you grew them in a container, you can simply dump out the container. If you grew them in the ground, you can use a garden fork and gently “comb” the soil.

Insects and disease

Rotating crops will help with disease. Potatoes are also susceptible to aphids, nematodes and potato beetles. If you have moles or mice, they tend to burrow down and eat the spuds.

I’ll be planting my spuds over the weekend. I’m thinking about adapting the trash can method…
We have a tall, unused compost bin. I think it may be perfect. I’m also going to put a few in one of the no-dig beds.

No related posts.

 On a rather dreary, chilly Sunday morning time to assemble the potato box.

There’s a layer of newspaper on the ground. About one section.
You can use only newspaper and make it as thick as you like.
I put cardboard over the newspaper. About a double thickness.

This is basically a weed barrier so that nothing in the ground below grows into your bed.
Both newspaper and cardboard compost down and both are worm friendly.

I also used cardboard on the sides to keep the water in. If you were using a wood raised bed, you wouldn’t put cardboard up the side.
Next you want to hose this down and get it good and wet.

The next layer is a sprinkling of bone meal and blood meal. These will add nutrients.

Alfalfa, bone and blood meal & potato starts

The next layer added was alfalfa. A bale is basically blocks tightly tied together. Each block is about 3″. This layer is one block deep.

Another sprinkling of bone and blood meal.

Then I threw in some sprouting potato eyes and a number of small potatoes not yet sprouting.

Different varieties.

I watered all this down well.

And on to…

Straw layer

I then layered in some straw, sprinkled in some compost and topped off with straw.

And of course a long watering to get it all saturated.

(sorry about the tilted picture).

So that’s it. The only tool I used today was a box cutter for the cardboard.

It took about 1hour and 15 minutes from start to finish.
That brings my total time to about 3 hours, 15 minutes.
Pretty good.

No related posts.

Last weekend I set up bed for a no-dig “box”.

I put this in an otherwise not very useful area… mostly under the shade of our lemon tree at the top of the photo and near the side and back property fence. The neighbor has a tree on the other side and there’s a structure on the lot behind… basically, Mr. sun doesn’t break through much to this corner. So it has been heretofore not used as garden area.

We’re just putting some potatoes in it. They do require sun but we’re going to see if they’ll produce in this little sunned corner.

The grey pipe with white and black end you see popping up there is a capped off irrigation line. We did have a box over there, but moved it a couple years ago… that sun issue.

I’m purposely trying to do this on the cheap.
What I did here was take chicken wire – which I already had around and rebar stakes which were also around from who remembers what.
Chicken wire typically comes in 3′ (36 inch) width.
I cut it in thirds for a 12″ height.
The bed measures about 2′ x 7′… 14 square feet of growing space.
(18 linear feet of 12″ chicken wire… 6′ of a roll.)

Bale of alfalfa

I set the bed up last weekend. I think it took about an hour.

Today we got a bale of alfalfa and a bale of straw. Judy, the very nice owner of a local pet store – Rabbit Ears, on Colusa in Kensington – told us we could go to the race track during the week and buy bales of stuff from a vendor there.

(Judy also gave us a few bags of rabbit bedding and poo which we’re mixing in with our compost).

So Sandy and I went to the race track – in our hatchback passenger car. We found the bale vendor who was kind enough to stuff the two bales in the car for us. Back on the freeway in a car with alfalfa and straw.

The race track is only about 10 minutes away which was good and bad… Good that is close – less gas, less time. Not so good in that wow, that stuff smells great!
I suppose I could have sat in the driveway with it for a few hours.

On the way back we did stop to pick up one thing…

Bone and blood meal

We already had bone meal, but we needed blood meal. So we grabbed a box at the local Longs Drug.

All set to assemble the box which I will do over the weekend.

So far:

I spent about an hour to construct the box and used material on hand.
-> Chicken wire is about $19 for a 25′ roll. I used 6′… about 1/4 roll – $4.75
-> The stakes are about $1.50 each. I used 6 – $4.50
-> Blood Meal was $9.50. I’ll use about 1/2 – $4.75
-> Bone Meal is about $6.00. I’ll use 1/2 – $3.00
-> Bale of Alfalfa – $17. I’ll use 1/2 – $8.50
-> Bale of straw – $7.00. I’ll use 1/2 – $3.50

So I’m up to $29.00 and about 2 hours of time.

I’ll post again about the “assembleage”.

No related posts.

The water situation has spurred a bit of publicity about “no-dig” gardens since they’re water stingy.
We like that.

Other benefits of a no-dig are well… not digging – a fine form of exercise for some; a dreaded, back-aching task for others.

As well, no-digs are organic, sustainable, quick, easy, low-maintenance and all-in-all very Mom (Mother Nature) friendly.

What’s not to love?

Sandy and I have already scheduled a back yard re-construction. We’re going to be moving some our raised beds and squeezing in 4 new beds. We’ll be doing this in the Fall after the summer growing season winds down. We’ve decided (at least) the 4 new beds will be no-dig designated.

Robin and Libby are getting a jump on us by plopping a no-dig in their so sunny front yard this weekend. (hmmm, competitive maybe?)

Here’s the basics of a no dig, sometimes called a lasagna garden since basically you layer on different materials:

- Find a flat area.
- It’s better contained in a raised bed, but that’s not a requirement (except maybe for persnickedy neat people… not mentioning any names here).
- Next you simply layer on different materials. I’ve read a few sources and they differ in the suggested material. But they also ensure there aren’t hard and fast rules.

Here’s the recommendation from Pat Marsi who was featured in the LA Times:
Layer 1: cardboard and/or newspaper. This works as a barrier preventing anything growing up from the ground below such as weeds. You want to soak the cardboard and/or newspaper either before you put it down or right after.
Layer 2: “Dust” the alfalfa with bone and blood meal. You can get this at most garden stores.
Layer 3: Alfalfa hay 2-4″. (You can get bales of hay and straw mostly at Feed stores).
Layer 4: Dust that layer with more bone and blood meal and now wet it all down.
Layer 5: 6-8″ of straw (Feed store with the alfalfa).
Layer 6: 2-3″ of compost.

That’s it. To plant make a hole and put a bit of soil for the roots of a transplant to take root in.

Over time all those layers will compost.
You can then scoop out all that compost for your layer 6 the next time around.

That’s a simplification and one method.
There are of course variations. And again, there’s not one “right” way.

Here’s another great article with a different way:
How build a no-dig garden.

Robin and Libby will post about their test no-dig garden.

No related posts.