The third in a series of articles about the progress of the barganews vegetable garden.The compost was spread last week. Now it was time to start preparing the ground. These fields have been lying fallow for many, many years so first of all they had to be dug down to 40cms. This could have been the seriously heavy part of the operation but was luckily lightened up by the help of a local farmer who brought out his magnificent 80 year old tractor and ploughed the top field in record time. Phew, that was close! A LOT of spade work was saved there. The field was then rotovated and 25 lilos of small potatoes seeded and covered by hand.
Next up on the list … the onions
Costs so far for the barganews vegetable garden –
transport compost – euro 20
Petrol rotovator – euro 10
Organic fertiliser – euro 10
25 kilos seeding potatoes – euro 30
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– euro 60
Oh… I see you went with the classic trench method…. for the potatoes…. hmmmm not so sure about that… Pretty much everyone I know goes with the raised row method, particularly with the non-cut seeders…. hmmmm… Well the yield will most likely be down.. probably only get a 2 to 1 yield…. ahh well….to each his own I guess… I am not going to muddle in someone else’s potato patch……no sir…
beauly … I am fact discovering that the world is full of experts. When it comes to growing vegetables they are not just experts but highly informed and vocally insistent on their own particular handed down through the ages system for preparing, growing and cropping all vegetables .. and let’s not go into the how much water, sun, shade, wind area of growing or probably the most “expert rich” area … just when you should be planting.
By the way, I just clicked on your name “beauly” at the top of your comment and up came some very special images shot right here in Barga … nice work
Thanks doggybag… there are so many incredible opportunities for images in Barga…everywhere you look…. but those are the easy ones… the other ones are the people, their stories, opinions, expert advice etc… these are the truly special images…. and they only exist right here in Barga… thanks for bringing them too us….
Attention Doggy: the state of Maine is as famous for potatoes as the Garfagnana is for porcini.
one eternal truism springs to mind:
“La terra è bassa!”