Lazy Beds Deserve a New Name

The last three days we set about planting our seed potatoes using the 'lazy bed' method. Just like last year, we bought a few too many. Its so tempting all those varieties with different qualities to choose from, and also wanting to cover the whole season by buying first earlies, second earlies and maincrop varieties too (cara, king edwards, sarpos) . Dan rang the organic centre for some advice on how to do a lazy bed and armed with information we started into the job. First we turned over a line of grass turf, yep, just flipped it over so the roots were up and the grass down!

On this we put a layer of rotted horse manure,

on top of which sat the chitted potatoes.

Then we (when I say 'we' that mostly means 'Dan') dug up the grass turf on either side of the central pile, and folded these over the top of the spuds, filling any gaps with soil.

I can assure you that there was nothing 'lazy' about this procedure at all! However, in a few months time our hard work will hopefully reap a reward of delicious home grown spuds ... nothing like it.

Comments

[Phelan]

The lazy part comes with harvest. {I do lazy beds every year. Never lost a crop doing it that way}

[keth]

i was just thinking, having done a lot of digging myself: nothing lazy about that!!! Fortunately i'm not growing potatoes (although now i've said that someone will offer me an allotment where i'll have to grow them) because of lack of space (and lets face it, spuds are dirt cheap in the shops), but if i was, i'd certainly be looking at doing it this way. It looks great!

keth
xx

[hedgewizard]

That looks kind of hard work. When we were reclaiming lawn we used "sheet mulch planting" which worked very well until the neighbourhood badgers found it!

http://hedgewizardsdiary.blogspot.com/2006/02/story-so-far-part-1-i-reckon-its-about.html

[Leonie]

You're right! That doesn't look lazy at all, looks like hard work.

I've really enjoyed reading your blog :-)

[Penny K]

You actually put sod on top of the potatoes? From each side. How does the plant emerge from such a heavy overlayment? Is there a slight gap between both pieces of sod where the plant can come up? What about watering?

[Hughes Anne]

I am teaching O level English and a poem about a woman smallholder in the Hebrides made mention of lazybeds. As a Londoner I had no idea. So thanks Sally Gardens for the info.

[john o brien]

hi. i use a similar but lazier method. to make life easy for yourself you can omit the first step. ie just put manure straight onto the grass. a strip approx 1m wide then place 3 or 4 rows wide of spuds onto the manure. now turn in sods from the left and right so you have one large 1m wide drill. its very quick and you could have 20 to 30 spuds sown easily in less than 1 hour