I recently saw Nicole Alderman’s
thread on garden beds prepared by potatoes, which is optimized for building soil, and I thought I would write a companion piece on how to optimize for harvest.
For those wanting to grow lots of potatoes, this is a good way to go about it: go over an area, turning over all the sod, break up the sod after a week, wait another few days, then form the dirt into deep beds. They don’t even have to be 100% topsoil, but they
should be deep. Then, dig out individual holes, really nice and deep, about sixteen inches apart (between centers). Put a half-shovelful of kitchen scraps into each one, followed by a little bit of dirt, followed by you seed potato wrapped in a comfrey leaf, followed by the rest of the dirt. Then go to the next hole. Afterwards, plant comfrey as a border to the potato garden, (not to the beds) and interplant with onions, garlic and chamomile. Use chop n’ drop comfrey as a mulch throughout the growing season. Harvest after all potato plants look dead. After harvest, reshape the beds, and cover them with comfrey leaves and potato tops.
Edit: corrected a detail
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