Near the edges of the patch I tossed them to outside. Down the middle I made wheel barrow runs, stopping at the end to make a big pile. Zack came by later with the tractor to pick up the piles; we loaded the bucket on the front three or four times. (Since I wrote this, we've filled the tractor with stones another dozen times... we're trying to find creative uses for some of them).
We prepped the taters last week by cutting them into pieces that each had three or so eyes. The kitchen crew came down from the restaurant and gave us a hand. I had a collection of knives at the ready for them but they of course all produced fancy knives from their waistbands. They blazed through the pile in no time. We spread the sliced taters on elevated mesh racks so the cut ends could cure before they go in the ground. Yesterday and today school groups came through to help plant.
Most of the classes were around second grade, four per day. They marveled at the purple potatoes and loved pressing the pieces flat-side down into the beds. (In one class, several of the boys were completely obsessed with their sneakers getting dirty). Many of them declared that they wanted to be farmers when they grow up. Maybe because the kids spent only about twenty minutes with us, I loved having them there. Quote of the day:
Teacher: Hey, get in there and do some planting.
Kid: I don’t want to do this.
Teacher: imagine how you’d feel growing up on a farm and having to do chores every morning.
Kid: Listen Lady, I do plenty of chores at home.
When the groups left, long lines of taters laid in the bottoms of the beds. Zack and I followed with hoes and pulled soil over them. Done.
Later on, a few groups of high school students came though and helped us with onions and leeks. Those beds had been prepped with a “bed shaper” attachment that mounts on the rear of the tractor. The shaper mounds up the soil behind the tractor and levels it off leaving uniformly wide and smooth-topped beds. Also on the shaper is a roll of bed covering, a corn cellulose membrane that looks like black plastic. The shaper pulls the roll cover over the bed. Tires press the cover down on the outside of the beds and disk push soil over the edges, tucking it in. The cover keeps in moisture, suppresses weeds, prevents crusting and UV damage. The membrane is easily punctured to make little holes for transplanting. The onions and leeks had been seeded months ago in the greenhouse into soil blocks, the tops kept trimmed at three inches to encourage them to set bulbs.
The week ended with more bed prep and row covering, rock pulling and finally with a few hours of co-hoeing (collinear hoe). The co-ho is a long-handled tool with a thin blade that runs parallel to the soil surface, and just below it. Imagine setting a book flat on a table and sling a knife along, just under the cover. That’s more or less the action of the co-hoe. The technique is great for newly emerged weeds. In theory, it cuts plants below the root crown or uproots them. When the soil is a bit dry and on a sunny day, one can run the co-hoe between planted rows pretty quickly and knock out tons of weeds before they ever get a hold. The hours of hoeing glided by. It was the sweet kind of monotony. Later in a crop rotation, many of the crops will make enough shade to do much of the weed suppression themselves. The favas are doing a good job of that at the moment. Speaking of the favas, the young leaves are a great succulent veg. They’re juicy and taste like sweet beans. Great for snacking or mixed into salads.
