Expanding the Garden and Planting More Potatoes

For the past week, I've been slowly reclaiming the prior owner's abandoned garden. I haven't measured it exactly but the area looks to be at least 20 ft by 10 ft. It is located in a much sunnier spot in the yard and will be ideal for growing most of my warm season crops like tomatoes, peppers and melons. Therefore if I were to expand my garden even further, here is where it would be.

Clearing the space is proving to be a lot tougher than I had expected as it was completely overrun by strawberry plants and mint. If anyone is interested in growing mint, I suggest you do so in a pot. Having dug up several HUGE piles of thick roots, I can appreciate now how truly invasive the herb can be. In fact, it has already begun to creep beyond the garden.


After clearing most of the area, to make life easier for myself I'm overturning the soil one section at a time and as needed. This past weekend was all about planting the remainder of my potatoes. As you can see, Jonathan and I decided to have another pajama gardening party after Sunday breakfast.

I started by digging a double row of trenches that were about 6 to 8 inches deep. I'd amended the soil with a bit of compost and some slow release organic fertilizer. In went the potatoes (cut side down)...

...which were then covered with about 3 inches of soil. As the plants grow, I will fill the trenches and hill up. I should have spaced my potatoes at least 12-15 inches apart but since I had so many, the spacing was more like 10 inches. Hopefully that won't affect the yield too much.


And yes, I still had enough potatoes left over to plant 6 more pots for a total of 12. For all of the effort that has gone into this, I will be gravely disappointed if I don't get at least 3 potatoes for every one that I planted. On the bright side, planting potatoes can be enormously fun.