In this video I with show you my worst potato harvest and share with you the mistakes that caused it.
A lot of times growing your own food is a rewarding experience, but sometimes it can feel like you’re chasing a fart in a fan factory. Our setbacks are opportunities to learn and grow. So in this video I’m gonna show you how not to grow potatoes so that you can learn from my mistakes and have a bountiful harvest.
Hi I’m Christina with Forever Food Forest. A channel where I explore ways of growing food without the use of pesticides, herbicides, or commercial fertilizers and instead I rely on permaculture principles and other natural farming techniques to grow food that’s good for the garden and good for the planet.
My first mistake was using fresh wood chips. Potatoes are not particularly picky about the type of soil they grow in. They can even grow in straw. I heard about the notill Back to Eden method and I was eager to try it. All I had was fresh wood chips and realizing that the fresh wood chips would suck the nitrogen out of the soil and their surroundings, I decided to compensate for that by adding a source of nitrogen: rabbit manure. I mixed it all together and created a perfect environment for insects to live in. So the lesson is: use aged wood chips. The wood chips need to age for at least six months, maybe even longer and then you can use them to grow your potatoes. Lesson learned.
My second mistake was planting the potatoes too late in the season. Potatoes are a cool season crop and they set the most tubers when temperatures when the soil temperature is 55 ° F or 12.8° C. I was hoping that we would get a late spring cold snap, but instead we got a heat wave and my plants were not able to set many tubers and my harvest suffered. So the lesson is: check your forecast.

My third mistake was not using any pest control. I didn’t even plant any companion plants or trap crops. What am I? Nuts?! Now I know, I know. At the beginning of the video I said that I didn’t wanna use any chemicals or pesticides, but there are some natural and biological options. I had a problem with cutworms. Ugh! They’re my nemesis. So I can’t help but wonder, had I used B t Thuricide and sprayed the potatoes earlier in the season, would I have been able to save more plants and maybe have a bigger harvest. Bt Thuricide is a bacteria that naturally occurs in the soil and it's an insecticide that only works on caterpillars, cutworms and horn worms and does not harm humans, bees or other beneficial insects. The lesson is, I can always try next year.

Gardening is an opportunity to grow, not just plants, but also as a person. You see, not every harvest is going to be a bountiful harvest. But every growing season has a lesson. And the more lessons we learn, the better we get along the way. So if you like this kind of content, make sure you “like” that button. And if you wanna see more content like this, make sure you’re subscribed. Hopefully this video was informative. If you have any tips for growing potatoes drop them in the comments below and until next time, grow with your garden!