Four days later...

Potatoes have about doubled in height again!

Time to add more mounded up stuff. Some dirt, some leaves. 

Someone asked whether the peas would shade out the potato plants. So far, the taters are growing much faster than the legumes!

Potato update

They are growing well after a couple weeks of solid rain. Time to mound up dirt around them. 

Some sources said to pretty much cover the plant. Others said cover only half or even a third of the plant. I sort of compromised:  I covered the bottom quarter to third with soil, then mounded up dead leaves as mulch up to a height of half to three quarters of the plant. I figure that will shade the stems and then as the plant grows more I will later more soil then leaves - if nothing else it will be a good lasagna garden base. 

We will see what happens!

Dividing chard

My chard came up in big clusters which makes some sense as I believe I recall it I related to beets. 

So since I have had success digging and dividing beet clusters before, decided to try it with the chard. Dug out each clump and gently separated into individual plants:

Then put the sturdiest into better spacing:

Put some of the extra into pots:

We will see how it does...

Potato tower

So I have never tried growing potatoes before. I plan to try growing a variety that are supposedly purple, although the seed potatoes don't look very purple:

But they have good sprouts on them so there is that. 

Here is a 2x2 bed, filled with compost and dirt to a bit below the surface, with a bamboo and mesh cage surrounding three sides. I plan to wall up the fourth side with more mesh as I fill in the dirt and compost around the plants as they grow. 

So I lay my taters in the middle and also a line of peas around the edge (might as well get extra use from the trellis). 

I expect the soil to sink down a bit because I dug a ton of leaves and compost down into it. The plan is for this to be a combination compost pile and bed, I will use yard trimmings and such to hill up around the plants as they grow. So last step is to pile up soil - a couple of inches at the edge over the peas, 3-4 inches over the spuds. 

So - did I do right?