towards actually sustainable farming in Ahualoa
I did the harvest today, and here are the results, in terms of grams of potato per plant: Yukon Gold 144 Dark Red Norland 113 Kennebec 283 Red Gold 244 Kattahdin 75 La Ratte 13 Papa Cacho 27 This is pretty awful. For comparison, just planting random store-bought yellow potatoes gives around 250 g/plant, while …
Here’s the chronology on the potato trial: 2020.07.20: planting day 2020.08.16 (day 16): all the potatoes have emerged and are growing nicely, except for the smallest varieties (Laratte and Papa Cacho), which are barely emerged and tiny plants. 2020.09.03 (day 38): The plants have been mounded (hilled) with regular garden soil. Nearly all plants are …
Today I examined the seed potato that we got for the trial. 7 varieties. Many were starting to decay. No doubt proper potato storage would involve a temperature or humidity controlled environment, but we don’t have such a thing, so a few were lost. Nearly all were at an advanced staged of growing eyes, many …
We’ve always grown potatoes occasionally, since I was growing up here, but recently I became more interested in really knowing potatoes and hopefully increasing production. To this end, I started a spreadsheet to track planting and harvests, and ordered some seed potatoes for variety trials. Background: We used to just use organic potatoes from the health …
How does biochar fits into our farm? I scribbled a flowchart onto paper, and today put it into the computer; it looks like this: Ideally, it’s a continuously flowing cycle; there is no “waste” and no need for unsustainable inputs; that’s the goal. The chickens provide meat and eggs to the humans, and poop to …