Hilling potatoes with straw.....RESULTS

[boggybranch]

Well.....Did you boil it or bake it?

 

[Rosalind]

It took only ONE disaster to turn me away from mulch in the spud patch. Many years ago, a lot of rain-spoiled alfalfa hay was available to me from a neighboring farm. I planted about a 20' by 50' piece of ground in potatoes and covered between the rows with the mulch. The plants came up and grew just fine.

When the vines died back, I started moving the mulch to discover . . . that the mice were there ahead of me.

It was really quite remarkable and I remember it well. I found 1 (ONE) tuber that hadn't been chewed on by little mice teeth. My thousand square feet of potatoes and a full season was a total waste -- except for that one potato.

Steve

I had that same problem. The worst was finding all these perfectly hollowed-out O-shaped and C-shaped potato skins. There must have been a zillion of em. I knew that at some point in the past, there must have been, easily, 5-7 lbs. yield/1 lb. seed potatoes planted...but all et by mice. I had been layering spoiled straw & hay from the dog pen with half-composted chicken litter when I found that one. The mice don't tunnel well in dirt, apparently, because the ones in dirt about 30 feet away were perfectly fine.