Saturday 19 March 2022

Planting New potatoes In The Veg Plot Time With A Bamboo Mulch Idea.

 We usually plant our chitted new potatoes on St Patrick's day but we never got a round to it and I dug two trenches whilst good old wifey planted the potatoes.  They are Duke of York and we purchased them from the place where buying beer is  verboten before 12.30 on a bank holiday or a Sunday.  They'd run out of compost yesterday

Duke of York newly planted and chitted seed potatoes.

Then I covered them up with soil and decided to experiment and cover the area up with some bamboo we cut down the other day.




The wife reckons it will work like straw and protect the emerging shoots from frost.  I think it will keep the weeds down and will degenerate and feed the soil and crop. Plus the potato stalks will easily push up or push through the bamboo mulch.

I often use old lawnmower and hedge clippings to mulch vegetables.  It's a way of feeding the soil without first composting it.  I have seen videos and read articles on line about using bamboo for a mulch.  A lot of them recommend putting them through the wood chopper first.  I think this would be time consuming and also being a natural or organic gardener and a bit of a tight wad.  I don't want to add to my carbon footprint or my eccentricity (electricy or "leccy") bill.

Have you ever used bamboo for a mulch or planted your 'outside'spudatoes yet? We should have enough with two rows and if you remember we still have our "inside" potatoes in 'Portugal' my polytunnel.

It's  glorious weather for the next few days down on the Irish Riviera.😊


13 comments:

  1. There's quite a bit of free bamboo growing around here but it's a bugger to cut. Our neighbour slashes at it with a machete and brings a truck load home.His 85 yr old Mama sits on the flagstones and trims it all up with her own machete. He uses it for tomato frames. I'll tell him about your mulching. He's the original Scrooge and will reuse till death do us part.
    Do they cover up the booze in hours not allowed?? Strange system , it seems to me.

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  2. Scrooge sounds like an allotment character that I have met over the years. It's good to repurpose or reuse organic material. Too much of it goes in landfill...

    I was in Lidl on St Patrick's Day morning buying compost and food. You had to walk through the off licence bit to queue up and pay. The cashier was telling people that they would have to put the drink to one side and come back to pay for it after 12.30. The computer wouldn't let the cashier proceed with the alcohol sale. It's the same every Sunday morning. Silly licensing laws. I believe in the 1970s you couldn't get a drink in Ireland on St Patrick's Day.

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  3. I don't even drink and yet I despair at out-dated licensing laws.
    No bamboo here for mulch, though I see folk gathering seaweed for their garden - I assume as some sort of fertiliser?

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  4. I agree with you Mark about the out dated drinking laws.
    Seaweed makes an excellent weed free fertilizer. You can apply to the veg beds or put it a pillowcase and weigh it down with a brick in a barrel of rainwater, makes a great garden tea. I do the same with nettles. You have to dilute your tea when you feed the plants.

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    Replies
    1. And don't forget to put a peg on your nose when you open the barrel.

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  5. Sounds like makes his own garden teas? Comfrey gives off a good pong and so does the nettles. Full of iron like nettle soup and nettle tea. Only me will eat it or drink it even. I wonder why?

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  6. The trouble with using bamboo as a mulch or as frost protection is that it tends to attract giant pandas. They are a real pest round here and can cause a lot of damage.

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  7. Oh no! It's enough with those pesky Leprechauns throwing their empty poteen bottles around the veg plot. Pandas like cola and drive Fiat Amanda's. I never thought of Panda's.

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  8. We've used seaweed by the trailer load, composted stable stuff, all the 'hay' F raked off the common land outside our allotments (the council mowed it about twice each summer but never baled the hay crop. It would just rot on the grass and turn the whole place patchy, so F used it to make a thick quilt on the garden. It keeps moisture in and weeds down and stop pumpkins from sitting on the dirt.) No bamboo though. Now that we've been warned about pandas we'll give bamboo a miss.

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  9. F sounds very organised Tigger. Soil is like a bank account. You can't keep taking money out without paying some back in. I make grass paths and mulches with a couple of week old lawn clippings. I think everyone would like a little Panda in their garden.

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    Replies
    1. My humans have got me. There's no room for a panda! 😾❌➡️🐼

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  10. I suppose not Tigger. They have got you.😊

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