Planting Potatoes

After the success of my trial potato plants, we've had a bit of a potato planting frenzy here. Jackie French reckons you need 60-80 plants to feed a family of four. We haven't quite got those yet, but these 25 plants should give us a good start. Assuming that they all grow of course, and that I don't kill half them like I did last time. (I'm pretty sure the grass was too green and heated up too much. Hopefully that won't happen this time, as the grass is dryer, and the weather is colder.)

Basically what I've done is put the seed potatoes ($2 a kg at my mum's local produce store) on the grass, and covered each with a spadeful of potting mix. Then covered the whole lot with some dry grass. As the plant grows, I'll add more grass/mulch, and hopefully keep building them up.

I've also had to cover the whole lot with an old sheet to stop the chickens scratching all the grass off. Hopefully they'll have given up by the time the potatoes actually come up, or else we'll have fenced this section too (which I suspect we'll have to do).