Gardening, I built a Potato tower today, I have started planting the vegetables and I'm almost at zero garbage!

  I started the day by setting all of the clocks forward, except the kitchen stove, it's going wacky, all the lights flash off and on, every beeper on it sounds off, and it on occasion just flat does not work. Today is one of those days, we discovered the problem on Thanksgiving, yep, then miraculously it started to work just as the deadline for putting the bird in arrived. Who needs another clock anyway, it seems like everywhere I look is a clock, that may be what killed the wristwatch. We will live until fall with the wrong time on the stove, it's not an important appliance, like the coffee maker, so it doesn't matter much. (to me)
  I sat in the fog this morning outside, it was kind of cold, 45 degrees is cold here, I'm still learning how to video so I set the camera up and let er' roll. There was nothing going on around the water, I could hear birds, frogs, and cows, but seeing them was a different story. I gathered up all my stuff and headed to the garden, I had a potato tower to build.
  I have had the wire fence cylinder made since October, I've been waiting for the right time to start the spuds, this is my first try at growing them in straw. I made a video of it, and I must say it ended up pretty good, I'd appreciate your input here is the Link. I bought a bale of straw, two actually, last November one was intended for the container garden, I was running low on leaves. The other was designated for a potato tower, I found the fencing, it was a good piece of about 50 feet long, it was on the side of the road someone was cleaning their garage or something. It is customary on the island to set items on the side of the road if a person wishes to give it away. There is a lot of stuff that is still good, but not worth selling whether it is paint stained, has a broken wheel, or some other minor problem. However the biggest problem is most of it is still "stuff", and I already have plenty of it around here.

The first tier bottom straw

The first tier straw, compost, and seed potatoes

  The wire fencing, we called it at one time "hog wire", I'm not sure if that term is still in use, has 2"x3" squares, larger would be better. Better for me, I have extra large hands they will not fit through a small hole like that, 3x4, 3x3, or even 4x4 would fit me better, but I use what I can get. The goal is to grow vegetables for less than what they can be purchased for, in this case, I have $11.00 invested in the straw bale. To break even I will have to harvest about 20 pounds of spuds so it will be touchy if it is cost effective. I can tell you right now if I were to include labor of myself and those who help me that 20 pounds of spuds would have to be in the $50 range, there's a lot to be said for raising vegetables in large quantities.
  I chose the spot for the straw tower where I plan on planting my new peach tree, that's the one I am growing from a pit, actually two pits, two trees came up so I did what anyone would do, I laced them together. It will grow with a twisted trunk, they wind around one another. The wire cylinder is about 4 feet high and a 2-foot diameter, I rolled it around then wired the ends together with the extra wire I left when I cut the fencing to size.

The finished Potato tower, 4'x2' around.

After placing the cage I placed 8 inches of straw on the bottom, then I made a slight depression and placed a layer of potting soil one inch deep and 3 inches from the edge of the straw. I leveled the soil evenly and placed the potatoes with the cut end down 6 inches from the edge of the wire cylinder. I bought 6 yards of compost when we built the container garden boxes, my grandson's actually did almost the entire construction. We built them and spaced them to allow me access from my disability scooter, yeh, I can't walk really well anymore. Part of being self-reliant is to not fret over what I am no longer able to do, but celebrate the things I can do, so I'm doing a lot of stuff that may seem odd to some people. But it sure is fun when people holler out the car window "Hey Jacques how're the worms doing?" or some other crazy project I have going.
  Layers of straw, compost, potatoes, and more straw dampen the straw the day before that will keep the newly planted potatoes watered, the warm weather will encourage the growth. Potatoes use a lot of water, they will show the vines through the sides, they will flower when the flowers show stop watering them and let the vines dry out.

The 5th and final set of Potatoes, I placed more straw on top of
these, then another nest of compost and finally I planted beets
and placed another 8" of straw over the top. 

They can stay in the "ground" for several weeks prior to harvest, I don't have the patience for that, when the vines dry out I dig them out. Depending on the weather it should take between 6 and 8 weeks for them to mature for harvesting, I suspect every gardener is like me, I will check them every day. I put five sets of potatoes in the column, I actually ran out of potatoes otherwise I would have planted another tier, I chose to plant beets in the last layer, everyone likes beets. I thought about planting watermelons in the bottom tier, then potatoes the rest of the way up, somehow that did not sound or feel like a successfully filled endeavor. I did, however, plant cantaloupe in one of my leaf towers, I have not heard of or seen anyone try that, although I am sure someone somewhere has, original ideas are extremely rare. I have a lot of faith in growing the potatoes, I have very little in growing the cantaloupe in the leaf tower, but hey I think it's worth a shot. Someone will drive by and holler "Hey Jacques hows the cantaloupe doing?" hardy har har.  I will report in 8 weeks or sooner.
  We are nearly at zero garbage, food waste that is, plastics, and screen printed cardboard are next, I have some ideas. My wife told me she had read about people making mattresses for homeless people out of empty water bottles, hmm, soft but crunchy. I found a guy on the internet who turned his plastic bottles into seed starting planters, they are actually pretty neat, I made one and it works great, but holy cow I'd have to plant hundreds of seeds. I'd like your suggestions on how to deal with plastic water bottles please leave them in the comments.
  The cardboard is a horse of a different color, the ink on the silkscreened boxes will kill my worms, even if I strip the colored outer layer away the residue left on the rest of it may kill them as well. I don't know if the ink will compromise my compost or not, although one compost bin I have is filled with worms as well. I am thinking of getting a "tumbler" type of composter, there is one in an abandoned lot down the road, I won't take it without talking to the past owner when I see her. Even at that, I'm not sure it will be safe in the garden, it would be a "hot" compost pile so I'm thinking maybe the heat would make the ink harmless. There are outfits that compost cardboard only, I'm thinking they must combine all of it into one pile to separate it would eat up their profit.

Cardboard composting is big business.

  I'm not so concerned with the meat, bones, grease, and pet scat The scat can be buried away from the garden, we don't eat very much red meat, due to my health will not tolerate it, it's a long story. I know we're not supposed to do it but I set Turkey carcasses out for the raccoons, as well as all the bones from ribs and the like. The reason I don't feed the meat, bones, and greases to the worms is due to the development of pathogens, it's not a given but it is possible, I use the worm castings as fertilizer on my vegetables, castings are after all manure, very rich in natural organic nitrogen.
  Manure is not all that bad to feed worms in itself, horse, cow, rabbit, and goat manure are fine because they don't eat meat. Chicken manure is not advisable to use, chickens have a digestive system that does not digest well, there is a lot of nutritional value in it, but not for worms. There are vermiculture toilets, under the correct conditions they are great. I do not feed my worms manure of any kind, domesticated animals are treated with "de-worming" medication. I knew a man that raised worms in Mariposa, he raised them on horse manure and he had well over a million of them. His neighbor gave him free of charge all the horse manure he could use, one day all of his worms had died. Now, worms are almost 99% water, so it's not like there were little tiny bodies laying all over the place, they decompose within hours and become one with the bedding. The de-worming medication killed all of his worms, it probably took about 6 hours for it to take place.
  Citrus, Onions, Peppers, and Garlic are all not good worm food, they will decompose in the compost pile well enough, so these I am also not really worried about.

This is the stuff a gardeners dreams are made of.

  I started the garden, Acorn squash, onions, zucchini, artichokes, and cucumber seeds are all in, I am expecting big things this year. We have another week until we might be able to plant peppers, and tomatoes, but hey I got the Potatoes planted today! hooray!
  Thank you for reading and sharing my blog, watch my video through the link above and you will see what the old guy looks and sounds like, plus you may get a laugh or two. Thanks again I appreciate you reading this.
jacquesandkate  EmergencyKitsPlus.com