Preservation, Seed Vegetables, and Recycling

Eden's Ghost Ready for amendment

I am continuing the midsummer harvest from the soil-free lasagna garden beds. Today it was another bushel of red potatoes, a bushel of shallots, and a bushel of red onions. I gathered them all in inexpensive laundry baskets lined with burlap.

Why Burlap?

The burlap is there to hold the peat moss, straw, or sawdust in the basket. This helps keep air and light off the potatoes and onions and preserves them over  the winter. The first year I experimented with preserving dry roots like potatoes and onions, I stored them in sand. It worked for short periods, but I had a lot of potato and onion rot from the sand, which absorbs moisture from the environment.

Recycled Growing Mediums

So I switched to peat moss and sawdust. The side benefit is that I can reuse the storage medium in the lasagna beds. #ZeroWaste sustainable self-contained garden. When I carted my three bushels of produce down I to my cellar, I was met with another surprise.

There are still two baskets of russet potatoes in peat moss down there. Granted, each bushel basket only has a few potatoes left, but those potatoes were sprouting! I pulled them out, cut the eyes apart and prepared to plant them for fall. I pulled the burlap back. Mixed the peat moss with bone meal, blood meal, some rabbit droppings, Epsom salt and a bit of algae water from the pond.

Voila! A reseeded potato bed. 20 more potato plants for the fall. These beds really are magical.