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GROWING POTATOES: EVERYTHING NEW IS A WELL FORGOTTEN OLD

When it started, I was seven months old, so I had time to sip the bitterness of the war years. Father was called to the front in the very first days. The mother was left with three children. The elder brother was in his 14th year, he worked throughout the war in turning workshops, making parts for weapons.

My sister is three and a half years older than me.

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Mom worked at a brick factory, and after work she loaded bricks into wagons. For this work, they paid mainly in products - cereals, flour, and sometimes money. And at night, like all women, my mother spun wool and knitted mittens with two sticks for the thumb and forefinger - for the fighters.

In those years, I did not see my mother resting lying down. He will come home from work, sit on our bed, lean against the wall with his back, and put a pillow under his feet on a stool and ask: “Daughters, watch how the empty one goes to the factory, wake me up.” And he will go in the middle of the night to load thousands of bricks. And at home, children, a garden, farming ... Then I firmly believed that all mothers never sleep.

From the age of five or six, we also began to work: weeded the beds, watered, maintained order in the house, stoked the stove, and in many ways replaced adults. In Siberia, the main food was potatoes. How old was I then? Four? But I remember how the chairman of the nearest collective farm came to our mining town on horseback - a soldier demobilized after being wounded in both legs. He asked the women to plant potatoes in the collective farm fields. He helped with seeds, and in this case, part of the crop was handed over to the collective farm. And there weren't enough seeds. Cut into small pieces, one or two sprouts. And those who did not have seeds for planting at all, they used cleaning: they broke off the sprouts and grew seedlings from them, which they planted in their gardens.

Collective farm fields were not plowed for potatoes - there was no one, and there was nothing: all the tractors went to the production of tanks. The main tool is a hoe. They didn’t trust me yet, so my mother put me in a row ahead of my sister. I pulled out large weeds - wormwood, spurge, sow thistle. She threw it on the rows weeded by her mother, and her sister was already cultivating potato plantings with a hoe.

Here you have the “new”, but in fact long-forgotten agricultural technology - growing potatoes without digging the soil, dividing the seed tuber into parts, growing potatoes from seedlings, grass mulching... By the way, there was plenty of it then in such fields.

And the harvests were good. It seemed that the higher powers themselves helped the long-suffering people: three bushes - a bucket of potatoes. Draniki replaced bread, carrot and beet tops, cabbage leaves, nettles and quinoa were used for soups. In the meadows they collected sour milk (sorrel), wild onions and radishes.

If potatoes were present in the soup, it was very tasty. Yes, she saved many from starvation then. After the war it became easier, but even then there were enough difficulties, and we all overcame them together, cheerfully. The people yearned for the holidays. Even harvesting potatoes was turned into a holiday. Together, about thirty people, they harvested the crops in several neighboring plots that were allocated to workers at enterprises. They loaded them into a three-ton truck and sent them to addresses, while they themselves moved to other sites. And again, a truck with a wooden cabin is carrying the harvest.

In the evening, grandparents will heat up the bathhouse, and set the tables together. Again, potatoes in all its forms and homemade pickles - cucumbers, cabbage. Here is the holiday: songs, dances to the accordion ...

So we lived, were kind and happy in our own way. Most importantly, there is no more war. In general, this is a strange property of memory: in the ninth decade, long-forgotten episodes of childhood suddenly come to mind, so clearly and in detail, as if it were yesterday.

Well, enough memories. Let me tell you about my experiments.

STRIPED POTATO AGRO TECHNOLOGY

After harvesting onions and garlic, I dug up the beds, choosing the roots of perennial weeds, and sowed rye. In winter, rye went 10-15 cm high. In spring, there is a lot of work in the garden, and in greenhouses, and in the beds: it's time to plant potatoes, but there is not enough time and energy.

I went to the trick: I marked out the area allotted for potatoes into strips of 60 and 70 cm wide. She pulled the twine. On beds 60 cm long, I cut off rye crops with a shovel, cut them with a shovel and left them to dry. The next day, the moty goy dug two grooves, spread the sprouted tubers after 25-30 cm, sprinkled with humus and ash, poured warm water, and then covered it with earth with withered rye greens.

Seedlings appeared quickly. After the rain, they burrowed with a flat cutter. Between the bushes I planted sprouted black beans in rows, 2-3 pieces per hole, watered them. After the shoots of the beans, a week later, she again weeded the potato beds with a flat cutter, raking the ground to the bushes. And rye is growing fast.

Potato seedlings are comfortable there: at night, rye shelters them from the cold wind, and in the heat it keeps the soil from drying out.

When the plantings rose by 20-25 cm, they watered well. Rye rose already above the knee, its emerald green adorned the entire garden. A neighbor asks: what kind of agricultural technology is this - a striped garden? I answer: “Yes, Sasha, I have a walk-behind tractor (showing my hands) of very low power, it is difficult to plow the ground, and then trample it. That's what she cheated."

Rye crops are now also cut between the rows with a shovel, and she cut it with it. The next day, I dug the aisles with a pitchfork, pouring earth on the rows of potatoes, either on the left or on the right. So I spudded my potatoes, and a groove formed between the rows, which I watered in dry times with fertilizing with herbal infusion, infusion of ash and chicken manure.

The harvest surprised me: I planted a bucket, and collected 18. Moreover, there were more tubers near the roots of the beans than in the holes, moreover, they were larger and more beautiful. I left all the ripe beans for seeds.

HARVEST ON OPGS

My estate is 6,3 acres: a house, a garage, a large yard, two greenhouses, a garden. There is a small area for potatoes. Therefore, I immediately adopted the method of growing in bags.

In 13 bags of white thick polyethylene with drainage holes, I filled up three buckets of garden soil and on May 25 planted two germinated, or rather, overgrown tubers of the Gala variety.

The bags were placed under the apple trees on the south side and on a pile of OPGS (enriched sand and gravel mixture). So the land savings are tangible.

I watered as it dries - yes, apparently, not enough. When harvesting, I found that the soil below was too dry. Potatoes were born good, 7 large buckets and half a bucket for seeds. There were almost no small ones. In half-filled bags, the harvest was better than in full ones. Why? I don't know, I have to think. And in three bags, potatoes were planted with seedlings. Yield is the same as tubers.

Next year, if I am alive, I will repeat the experiment, only I will try to increase the air and moisture permeability of the soil. So it turns out that need, laziness and old age, and weakness are the engines of progress. And the earth and my green pets give me health and prolong life, save me from stress and physical inactivity.

Health to all who love mother earth, successful experiments, good harvests!

I wrote a lot, but there are even more thoughts, experiences, desires. I want to convey this to someone, not to take it with me into oblivion. You can shorten the letter, I will not be offended.

From the editor. A low bow to you, dear Tamara Egorovna, many strengths and good health! We didn't cut a single word in your letter.

Reference by topic: How to grow potatoes in a swamp and virgin lands?