INVENTIVE BED

Creative search is possible in all areas, and agriculture is no exception. For example, at the individual plot of each can experiment as much as you want at your pleasure. So I went to the dacha gardening. So I want to share some experience of experimental cultivation of potatoes — without the use of any mechanization and, moreover, without plowing the land.
Because as usual planting potatoes? Trying well loosen the soil and remains in her tubers. And then you have, more than once, to fight with weeds, for whom this earth as a Paradise; then the earth and again to dig in the fall to harvest. Well even if the soil is sandy or has the opportunity to use the mechanisms, and when clay? Yes, there are only a shovel and a rake, Yes weather —rain. No, there is no inventive imagination is not enough.

To trace the course of the creative search, sometimes it is impossible. Why I came to offer readers the option to explain to is not taken. And here is the result of this process was unexpected, even for me. Judge for yourself.

For some time I do in the spring. On the virgin land of the lawn laid out on the ground potatoes and … covered with a thin layer of sawdust. You can add sawdust to peat, rotted manure or any other organic matter. Layer of the substrate of about 10 cm, if only potato could not be seen. Boarding is finished. Sawdust you need to use stale, otherwise their excessive acidity burns the sprouts and potatoes might not grow. Small acidity polupereprevshie sawdust even helpful on tubers will not be a scab. On these plots and weed less.

Potato rises as usual. Shoots break easily, the roots are easily zaglubljajutsja even in untilled land, and the entire crop is under the canopy of sawdust. The growth process of roots, it is interesting to observe: sawdust under a Bush swell, forming a hump, which becomes more and more.

To clean potatoes easy — even the tool is not needed. Bush pulled all the tubers on it, please try early potatoes. After complete maturation of the crop is easily selected from the sawdust by hand in almost any weather, even after heavy rains.

Potatoes of this technology is clear, as if washed, the correct form, is almost never rots, there are no traces of mechanical damages. Some varieties give up to 5 kg harvest per Bush, of course, with appropriate doses of fertilizers and the optimum moisture content.

In the cultivation of potatoes in my method, the ground it is not necessary to plow, plant can be produced very early (immediately after snowmelt) that is reasonable to get an earlier crop and enlarge (early planting greatly increases yields). In conventional technology waiting, when the earth dries, it is ready for ploughing, and it is almost a month later than my technology.

After the first planting technology planting differs in that it uses the old sawdust lying on the ground. It is necessary to rake the sawdust to the ground, put the potatoes and fill it. Upon decomposition of sawdust are added fresh every few years. It is better to fill up on top of the old after planting or after harvest so that they, too perepisali to the next landing.

The separation and banding of potato area:

1 — beds from sawdust; 2 — wooden planks edging the beds
 

Sawdust bed:

1 — piping (palabrica edge of the Board); 2 — a layer of sawdust; 3 potatoes; 4 — boarding (sprouted) potatoes

Of the disadvantages of my method of growing potatoes is the fact that the mouse feels quite comfortable in sawdust and can chew a part of the harvest. Two-legged creatures are also attracted to easy access to my roots: put hands in the sawdust, potatoes will povydergivat — Bush grows, and the harvest there.

However, the advantages of this method, however, outweigh the disadvantages. I have tested this technology for several years and every time was pleased with the results.

Now, a few specific details about this technology. The area with sawdust or parts of it is better to “turn over” overlaid with wooden blocks or partially sunken boards which will not be given sawdust flow on the edges from the wind or rainfall and will keep the required thickness of their layer. You have to keep the sawdust retains sufficient humidity.

If the area is divided into separate beds — they make each separately, about the size of 1,5×0,6 m, keeping the gaps between patches is around 0.5 m. the Frequency of placement of tubers in the beginning was to have four to five pieces per square meter. Later brought to one of the tuber in the same square, but used the varietal potatoes — Dutch and domestic: he yields, respectively, to 400 and 150 kg/ha. Tubers were planted large, pre-germinated in the light for about 1.5 months, and they grow large, up to 300 g was reached, and matured well: in late July — early August, had a large early potatoes.

V. SEMENOV