Easy Way to a Big Potato Crop

New Zealand Listener, Volume 26, Issue 652, 4 January 1952, Page 17

Easy Way to a Big Potato Crop

OTATOES, we have been warned, are likely to become as scarce as hens’ teeth this season. Perhaps you haven’t enough garden to grow yours (potatoes, we mean) or are short of seed. But "did. you know that with six seed potatoes and six barrels (or their equivalent in stakes and boards), a heap of soil and compost and some artificial fertiliser, you could provide your family with potatoes for a year? R. P. Shibnall, the 3YZ Garden Expert, explained how in.a broadcast which listeners in many. parts of New Zealand have already heard. And in case you think it’s..too late to do anything about it this season, he assures us that a crop can .be started right up to the end of January. -Plant one potato in the usual way, he».says, and prepare your soil-three barrow loads to a barrel. Make it half compost or well-rotted stable manure and half ordinary good garden soil, and thoroughly mix in one pound of superphosphate, a half-pound of blood and bone.and a half-pound of sulphate of potash. Store this until needed. Keep it moist | ‘but. not wet.

When the potato plant is about six inches high put a barrel, without a top

or bottom, over it, and add soil till only an inch of potato top is showing. When the top is again. six inches high add more soil -and carry on in this way to within two inches of the top of the barrel. Leave that unfilled

to make the plant easier to water, if necessary. While filling the barrel never let the potato get more than six inches above the soil. If you have no compost or stable manure use lawn clippings. Mix the chemical manures into the soil, and as lawn clippings become available thoroughly mix them with an equal quantity of soil. Keep them damp so that they will rot and not just dry up. And in the fertiliser mixture the potash is essential. If you have no barrel, drive in four strong stakes two feet six inches apart to form a square. As the potato grows

and soil is added nail boards on the outside of the stakes. Potatoes are grown in this way in Britain in competition, and over a hundredweight from a barrel is necessary to get into the prize money!