Early potatoes

Just wanted to share my accidental success with early potatoes this year. I collect halloween pumpkins from our neighbors to recycle, and this year I made a hot bed. In March I planted some red potatoes under a plastic hoop, with additional row cover underneath (I am in zone 6b). Yesterday (May11) I had my earliest potatoe harvest ever. It’s on a “proof of concept” scale, but nonetheless exciting.

WOW Tatyana that is awesome!

So explain a little more about the pumpkins. Do you put them in a separate compost pile and then move the compost to the beds or do you just lay the pumpkins down in the bed and plant in them?

Is it all pumpkin compost or other ingredients?

Nothing fancy - just piled cut up pumpkins in there and covered with 2-3 inches of dirt. Kids called it “pumpkin cemetery”. I did add a heap of worms from a compost pile though, and I still see them dancing hapily in there. I love the idea recycling the pumpkisnthis way. Plus I got over a gallon of pumpkin seeds to snack on all winter. I ended up grinding most of it and using as a “bone meal” in other parts of the garden.