Straw Beds Produce Clean Potatoes

Straw Beds Produce Clean Potatoes CROPS Straw 27-5-2 Straw beds make for clean potatoes and a much easier harvest, according to Betty Lou Brown, Wolfville, Nova Scotia. When you live on top of a mountain, snow is common in May and frost can still visit in mid June so you have to baby your vegetable garden, she says. That's one reason Brown and her husband Chet plant their potatoes into a deep bed of straw. The idea has paid off. "We planted a bushel of seed potatoes in a 30 by 60-ft. area and gathered 13 bushels back in the fall," says Brown. "They were beautiful potatoes, nice and clean and no scab at all. Sweet potatoes did very well, too. We just spread them out, cured them and they lasted into February." A big advantage of straw is that not all the potatoes have to be harvested at the same time. Early in the season, she and her husband simply push the straw aside and pluck out the largest potatoes. The small ones are left to continue growing once the straw is pushed back. Brown lays down the seed potatoes in rows 3 feet apart and at 18-in. spacings in the row. She then covers the potatoes with a foot thick layer of straw. Once the potatoes are harvested, the straw is placed on winter crops like parsnips. Straw isn't the only tool in Brown's gardening arsenal. Thanks to a friend who works at an area web-fabric manufacturing plant, she is able to get reject web fabric. Usually used in printing plants, the plastic material makes perfect fence material around gardens, fruit trees and other plants. The material creates a windbreak against drying summer winds while creating a warmer microclimate than surrounding hillsides would produce. "The ground warms up quicker, and wildlife can't get at it; its too slick and strong," says Brown. "Even porcupines can't climb it." Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Betty Lou Brown, 1330 East Peck Meadow Road, RR1, Wolfville, Nova Scotia, Canada B4P 2R1 (ph 902 542-2717).

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