We’ve tested this no dig potato growing method over multiple seasons and with several different varieties. That list includes Norland, Smart, Red Sangre, Purple Viking, Bellanita, and Caribe so far.
Yields from our three no dig potato beds this year averaged 1.5 lbs per square foot of bed space, which compares well with dug beds and is especially good considering we never lifted a shovel!
A common mistake people make when attempting to grow potatoes under mulch is not using enough mulch. The mulch is responsible for keeping the tubers cool and completely dark so your layer of mulch has to be thick enough to serve these purposes. Insufficient mulch will result in poorer yields and many green potatoes.
Topping the no dig beds with mulch does take a bit more time than hilling the potatoes with soil, but the harvest is so much faster that the total labour time I’ve recorded for our no dig beds is still 30% less than a standard potato bed, and the work is much less physically demanding.
To learn more about how to grow a productive garden with ease, head over to my Free Workshop here: https://www.vegetableacademy.com/yt-freeworkshop
You can find a detailed comparison of no dig, no till, and double dug potato beds in this full length YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0N8oB_bGeXI
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23 Comments
How do you keep the animals from eating them
What’s up with the shovel you threw? It’s mesmerizing
Looks good. Thank you. 👍💪🙏
If I did this, I know the groundhogs and opossums will have them gone in a night
No dig is always best
Ill try this out thank you
But doing that why looks like the potatoes are very small
I grow mine on mounds then mulch, same idea but yes this works
seems like a great way to get small, green potatoes
Lot of labour required, more like child labour 😂😂😂
that’s so much work lmao just put them deeper? lol
Do you this with sweet potatoes? I found that those guys go super deep and are a big pain to dig out.
Yeah it works, feeder roots go down, potatoes grow where it's easy to displace the soil
And I'm sure less soil to scrub off of them as well, right?!
Digging potatoes is so much fun,
Digging them up is the fun part for me though lol
Thank you so much!!! 🎉
Try stacking tyres!
This is fine and it works, just one question: where am I to get the vast amount of mulch or straw needed for "hilling"?
Where I live both cost money.
Hilling with soil means a lot more work, for sure, but it is free (assuming you own your garden.)
Awesome channel dude inspiring stuff
Looks viable for time and labor savings… yield… 🤔 … only wonder if there is SIGNIFICANT changes in nutritional value and quality. (probably not w/first gen)
I dont really understand the difference between removing mulch and removing soil
Do you find your potato tubers go green more with this method?