Potato Wars........

Although it may seem that I, like Napoleon, have "met my Waterloo", I am NOT admitting defeat just yet. Here's the scenario...I totally love the 'lasagna' method of gardening, (see Patricia Lanza's book, "Lasagna Gardening" for details), and have successfully turned two huge areas of my veggie garden into lasanga beds. This not only cuts back on all the tilling that needs to be done evey year, but the beds are always ready to go. It just requires me pulling back some of the hay, adding a bit of soil or compost and planting! I have started a beautiful new flower bed this way, right in a patch of grass, without having to lift the sod, or dig at all. I have another flower bed started and am seriously thinking of laying out a wide border garden down near our creek.
Anyway, back to the Potato Wars story....So I read in my book how this woman grows potatoes with this method. She lays the potatoes right on top of the bed and then covers it with hay. The plants are supposed to grow right up though the hay and voila! no continous hilling with soil, no digging the potatoes out, you just lift the hay and there they will be......Unfortunately, NOTHING in my potato beds has come up through the hay. In the meantime the 'boys' in my household took out the tiller, tilled a bed up, made a furrow,planted the rest of the potatoes, then hilled them up. Needless to say, a little 'competition' emerged and so the "potato wars" were on. Things are not looking good on my front.......the boys' potatoes are 10 inches tall and thick with lovely green leaves...mine is a big wide bed of hay....So I decided that maybe in my zeal to cover them enough so the potatoes would not turn green and be inedible, I put too much hay on. Maybe the shoots couldn't make it through the hay. So I removed all the hay, found the poatatoes, (which did have roots and shoots on them) and recovered them with, this time with a lot less hay. As they grow (I say, optmistically) I will continue to cover them and hopefuly I will be harvesting a lovely batch of clean, soil-free,easy to pick, tubers! I'll keep you posted, and in the meantime, keep your fingers crossed for me.....