Finally Got The Potato Crop Right!

Today we dug up a big bowl of potatoes...enough potatoes to last us (4 adults) for a week, with a bit leftover. They came from 3 plants, a miniscule fraction to the number we planted. If the rest of what we dig up looks this good, and they don't get any disease, we will have a constant supply of potatoes through February, I think. Maybe longer.

I'm planning to plant another batch of potato seeds in the coming weeks (the last planting opportunity). Hopefully we'll harvest that crop by the end of April, extending my supply through Winter. Unless our rate of consumption of them is higher than I estimated, of course.

I'm very excited about this success, because my family consumes a lot of potatoes and so far, potatoes have been among the few vegetables that I've had to consistently buy.

Site selection: I've tried various options to grow potatoes - car tyres, containers, designated areas to build towers and just planting plain into the ground. I know other people have seen great success with the the tyre/container/tower options, and I wish I could too, because it's a very good use of space. However, so far the only crops that have grown well are the ones planted directly into beds. I'm OK with that for now, because I have a reasonable amount of space. But I still want to make a success of the other options in the future.

Soil Preparation: I've tried to grow potatoes numerous times, with little success and I've come to realise that a bit part of the problem was the lack of soil preparation. This time, we mixed the soil with manure, let it sit for a while, planted and then mulched very heavily. So even when it was dry and rain was not coming, the plants still continued to grow reasonably well. So yeah.. that advice about soil preparation and mulching?  Do it!! It really made a difference.

The Planting Process: I struggled to source potato seeds locally, so eventually I just took a bunch from my kitchen supply, bought from the supermarket and stuck them in the beds. We planted the seeds in rows around 12 inches apart.

Caring For The Plants: As the plants grew, we dug the soil from between the rows and built mounds to cover the tubers. This is a semi-arid area and temperatures can get into the mid-thirties ( degrees Celcius) even though it's Spring, so put on a lot of mulch over the soil every time we expanded the mound and made sure that the plants were watered well. We were fortunate enough not to have to deal with potato diseases like dry rot.

Harvesting Potatoes: Generally a crop is ready for harvesting after 10 weeks of planting. For now though, we're slowly digging up a few plants when we need some, but I know that closer to winter, we're going to have to dig up everything when vines die.

In the coming weeks, I'm going to try out a number of recipes for the potatoes. My favourite is potato salad. I love the tuber creamy with mayo, chives, black pepper  with optional egg/chopped cucumber/ peas/bacon. This time I went with boiled eggs from our hens, and the salad was accompanied by pot roast chicken, with a bit of fresh chilli adding a bit of a kick to the chicken to contrast nicely with the salad.

I used the drippings from the roast to make an onion/tomato/kale dish to go with the meal. Waaay too much fat I know, but it was delicious. The ingredients also came from the garden.

P.S. Today my younger SIL gave me a nice phone that has a decent camera, so I'll start taking more photos from the garden and posting them here.

P Is For Peas

Pea seedings in the April garden

I love growing peas. They are one of my favourite crops, as they are very easy for me to grow and I have plenty of opportunities to use them in soups, stews and salads. Peas also release nitrogen into the soil, enriching it, so I like to move my pea crop around so that they can help me doctor my soil.

I planted most of my winter pea crop in March, but I also added a late batch in April. Just for extra.

Site selection: Peas like a sunny spot where it is also protected from winds. In autumn and winter, I usually plant in mine near the fence barrier between the vegetable garden and the main yard.

The space gets sun most of the day and the fence is ideal for allowing the plant to be staked to. In summer I plant my peas along with my maize crop. The pea plants can then run up the maize plants.

I've also grown dwarf peas in soil that seems to be deficient in nutrients, more to help the soil than because I expect to get a big yield out of it. Dwarf varieties don't really need much support, so they are happy to go anywhere as long as there is good drainage and sun.


Soil preparation: My soil is clay, with a good dose of manure and a bit of compost and mulch.

Planting process: I usually use one of those small plastic spades to make a small flat-bottomed trench that is 5cm (2in) deep and 15cm (6in) wide on soil that has been softened for planting. I then sow the seeds  in the trench approximately 7.5cm (3in) apart and cover with soil and move on to the next row.

Or sometimes when I'm feeling lazy, I take  a walk along my bed, basically inserting the pea seeds and guesstimating the depth space apart. Peas are kind, so they've germinated anyway.

Caring for the plant: Most of my plant care has just involved keeping the pea plants well-watered, but not so much they become water-logged. I also stake the runner-type plants.



My research on diseases and pests that could plague pea crops was a bit disturbing though. I would definitely have been a bit intimidated if I'd known at the beginning that peas are popular with aphids, pea weevils, thrips and pea moth, fusarium wilt, which turns the plants yellow, then brown and causes them to shrivel and die, and root rot fungi which happens if your peas are water-soaked for a while. Then there's mildew... By then I was thinking, "Good Lord! It's a wonder newbie gardeners still attempt growing peas!"

Still, don't be discouraged too much by the literature because adequate crop rotation, keeping your crops watered but not water-logged and if need be, growing your crop under an insect-proof mesh, helps you avoid  most of the problems. But I did decide that I was going to speak to someone more technically savvy about the diseases, because surely I'll run out of luck sooner or later :)

Harvesting:  Pea pod are ready to harvest when they look well-filled, but to be honest, I usually start munching on the peas when the pods start growing bigger while I'm in the garden.  All in the name of testing to see if they're ready, of course.


The great thing is that they'll keep fruiting as you keep picking them, so you can have numerous harvests from the same plants. They stop producing flowers or pods if you stop picking them or wait too long to pick the batch though.

Serving suggestions: Freshly picked peas are soft and sweet and don't really need cooking.  I just put a dishful of pods on the table and the family shell  and snack on them throughout the day.

I also love throwing a bunch of them into a stew maybe two minutes before I take it off the stove. They bring in a sweet fresh taste to a dish and they also add some colour.

I also mix fresh peas with mashed potatoes (after mashing) and with my potato salads. Once the peas grow a bit solid/tougher, they start  being boiled with soups. Or I cook them quickly with carrots, add a bit of butter/margarine, fresh basil, salt and pepper/paprika/cayenne pepper depending on the flavour I'm after, and I have one more dish for my table.

Looking For Seed Potatoes

sage bush outside my kitchen

It's planting time and I want to aggressively grow potatoes. The problem is that the vendors who nornally carry seeds don't carry seed potatoes and neither do the any of the local (Rustenburg-based) nurseries that I visited today. What a bummer!

I know I could source them online, but I didn't want to go that route, as it would take too long. Urgh! That is soo frustrating!

While I was at the nurseries, I also bought a small bush of rosemary. I had a rosemary around a year ago. Unfortunately, I killed it. Not sure what I did wrong. So we try again.


I also got a small sage bush to add to the two that are thriving outside my kitchen (love the flowers), some seedlings for green peppers, spring onions and another variety of tomato.

I'm going to plant these just outside my kitchen, so I can grab them when I'm cooking and need something quickly.

Oh, and if a nursery owner from Rustenburg ends up reading this post, or if you live in the general area and know where I can get seed potatoes, please email me.  Please. I would be so grateful!