Lazy Potatoes | The Easy Way to Grow Potatoes | No Dig, No Compost, Easy Harvest!

Lazy Potatoes | The Easy Way to Grow Potatoes | No Dig, No Compost, Easy Harvest! Even if you have never grown potatoes before, this video shows you an easy way to get great results, build soil fertility and maintain soil life.

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Chapters
0:00 Introduction
0:32 Equipment for growing potatoes
0:50 Plant seed potatoes
1:20 Chitting potatoes
3:11 Why add hay or grass clippings on top of potatoes?
4:00 Does growing potatoes under grass clippings work?
5:46 Cover potatoes with hay
6:28 Can I use chicken bedding on potatoes?
8:18 Best mulch for potatoes?

About Us.
Byther Farm is a small organic homestead, being designed and managed using permaculture practices. We aim for self-sufficiency in fruit and vegetables for increased self reliance and better resilience to the modern world. I recognise that we are unlikely to be truly self sufficient, but do the best we can. I share our home with my loving husband, Mr J and our cat, Monty.
We are a fifty-something couple who live on a smallholding in Carmarthenshire, Wales. We are going green and creating a gentler, cleaner and more healthy life for our family.
Having had a highly successful smallholding in Monmouthshire, we hope to recreate the abundance at our new home. There will be a large organic kitchen garden with no dig gardening raised beds and young food forest in which to grown our fruit and vegetables.
We keep a few sheep and Aylesbury ducks.

Music

[lindalida]

I watched my grandmother doing this when I was a kid back in the 1950’s. She was in her 80’s and digging was difficult for her. When she wanted just 1 or 2 potatoes for dinner she would lift the hay and just pick them and replace the hay.

[briankleinschmidt]

Digging through the soil is the best part of growing potatoes. There's nothing quite like the joy of finding a treasure in the earth. Eating them is a whole different joy.

[tonyhemingway]

Why is it that, in the YouTube videos, everyone plants whole seed potatoes? I can remember my father cutting his potatoes according to how many eyes they had. If the potato had 3 eyes, he would cut it so that he could have 3 potato plants. He always had a good potato crop.

[firstwavepuresoul]

Filmed 7th March 2022.. I find it helpful to know the date when filmed in case of missed harvest or other reasons. I see YouTube doesn't show any dates anymore on anything. not a complaint though..love the gardening!

[edb]

I've heard of planting potatoes in this way but have not tried it. I have used grass clippings as mulch for my
garden plants and it's especially good for potatoes, corn, and beets.

I remember my mother once harvesting potatoes from our compost pile. Apparently, there were some potato
eyes on the peeling she'd tossed there. Those were our biggest potatoes, even though they pretty much were
just volunteers and not planted from seed potatoes.

As to avoiding digging potatoes? Perish the thought! I LOVE digging potatoes. It's an adult form of an
Easter egg hunt. 🙂 It's also a good way to collect a few worms for fish bait.

[JHaven-lglj]

For people who are new to composting, “hot” compost is compost that’s high in nitrogen, not in temperature.

[sharonmartin]

Africans grow and dig up tubers in there deserts, potatoes grow anywhere, maybe not North or south pole! where ever you are if you stick them in a medium they will produce! Thank You for your kind Video! I was born in Luton, and moved to San Diego when I was 20 years, I have grown potatoes in all climates!

[elizabethwest]

I once lived in a place with ground squirrels. My husband dug a thin ditch and slipped in a wall of chicken wire. All around the potatoe area. It worked fairly well. Not completely but we got a much better harvest than without it. The wire was vertical like a wall.

[ArkansasWoodcutter]

Great explanation of easy potatoes Liz. Thank your for sharing. I have a few left. This will be easy enough

[wandaburnell]

I have Ruth's book no work. I followed her instructions and put hay down layed the potatoes on the hair, layed more hay over. At harvest I just removed the top layer of hay and picked up the new potatoes. Yes you can use straw instead of hay.

[flatout]

Thank you for the bedding info never knew I'd have to wait a year before using chicken bedding as compost. Saved me from a possible future issue as I plan to use chicken bedding as my nutrition for a garden once setup.
Btw an old Michigan man told me his dad use to grow potatoes all year even in fridge winters with a a few feet of snow on the ground using this hay method. Just remove the snow and hay and BAM you got fresh taters in the middle of winter. Guy said he did onions as well.

[tmd]

Growing potatoes is so fun!
I don't know if it is the same in the UK, but in the states we have to be concerned about hay or straw being sprayed with Grazon herbicide, it will devastate your nightshades. I love the idea of growing with straw but no one I can purchase from can guarantee that it was not sprayed with herbicide.

[garyweaver]

I have to grow what i can buy. Geographical location, weather, soil, determines how good my crop is. TN is 100°f and desert for 4 months June to Sept with almost no rain. I never buy $5 per lb seed potatoes anymore. Grocery store potatoes grow great. Red potatoes out produce white potatoes 4 to 1. 5-20-20 fertilizer, very soft soil, lots of water, each 1 eye cutting grows 4 lbs of potatoes. If 1 seed potato has 5 eyes I get 5 plants = 20 lbs of potatoes. 100 plants = 400 lbs of Red Norland potatoes.

[marybogar]

Hi from Texas, I planted Yukon Gold potatoes in my raised bed. I cut my seed potatoes to have at least 2 eyes and let them sit on the counter for a bit. I wasn't sure if they would sprout but I was so surprised they are coming up and look very healthy. I am following some of your suggestions and look forward to learning and experimenting with different ways of growing potatoes.
Thanks again for your informative videos.

[myidahohomestead.]

I've been using the Ruth Stout method for a few years now. I don't plant them in the spring anymore. I just leave some potatoes under the hay when i harvest the rest each fall. The ones i leave come up in the spring without me having to do anything.

[BurninSven]

I harvest my potatoes in the store it is very easy, no digging included for me either lol

[nicolasutcliffe]

Ooooo I do get excited when it's time to start planting and growing 😀 thank you for the video. Have a lovely day 🌻🌻🌻

[toni]

I'm no gardener so, when my potatoes were a little out of date in the kitchen once, I just tossed them out of the window. Suddenly one day I found I had a load of weeds in the garden that I thought I'd better get rid of. Hey presto; spuds everywhere.

[DigwellGreenfingers]

I did a load of early potatoes like this for Erica's Potato Challenge last year - pretty good results especially when you consider the lack of effort required!!
Have a great week Liz.

[TheEssexAllotment]

A timely video Liz - I planted my first bed of spuds in the market garden today. With an almost unlimited supply of rabbit bedding I’ll be using this method to ‘earth up’ this season. ✌️