November 5, 2024

VIDEO: Planting Potatoes in a Ruth Stout Permaculture Garden (QUICK and EASY)


We built a couple of Ruth Stout gardens in the fall by simply laying some old spoiled hay over the grass. Today we peeled back some of the hay to find healthy worms and a layer of top soil – the perfect conditions for planting POTATOES!

30 thoughts on “VIDEO: Planting Potatoes in a Ruth Stout Permaculture Garden (QUICK and EASY)

  1. I grow russet burbank & pontiac red, too! I have fantastic results and high yields in my area with these varieties. Also, Kennebec & french fingerlings….

  2. Hi, another great vid. So this is what we did (and I hope it works). We had some empty soil covered with nonwoven fabric. I removed this and added some spoilt hay left outside in the meadow over the winter. I made two rows up to about 8" high as you recommend. My question is – this hay was not left on the soil from the autumn, so do you think we can still plant potatoes like you have done this spring?

  3. I followed Ruth Stout’s idea of throwing potatoes on cut lawn and covering with a big load of hay and we had a spectacular crop of potatoes. Now we have permanent potatoes… they grow like weeds. And that seems to me what happens originally in nature.

  4. I followed Ruth Stout’s idea of throwing potatoes on cut lawn and covering with a big load of hay and we had a spectacular crop of potatoes. Now we have permanent potatoes… they grow like weeds. And that seems to me what happens originally in nature.

  5. Please make more gardening videos! Love the Ruth Stout method. How do you plant tomatoes and cucs, etc. In deep mulch? I think you just plant them into the dirt under the hay, then put hay around plant. I've used these methods for 46 years but needed deeper mulch. Love your videos. Are you going to build a hoop house, etc? Share more. Like your gardening methods best! And your well documented processes. Thanks.

  6. Thanks for this video. It inspired me to give it a try. Being slightly out of work because of COVID-19 and hearing in the news about food shortages, I wasn't taken a chance. I used the unused stone screened horse arena and made (3) 25ft. rows in March. The rows were layered in this order: Aged horse manure, top soil and screened compost, then topped with old hay. Today is June 12th and I have had to cover the potato greens twice after planting in early April. I also planted onion sets and butternut squash/zucchini by seed. It seems to be working just fine. I'll be adding more rows next year for sure.

  7. I may have asked this before, but you really don't need to water….at all? I'm in zone 7 Philadelphia, and we routinely get 90-95+ heatwaves in the summer….your thoughts? Love your channel 😉

  8. I think Ruth's method was the precursor to the cardboard mulch method so many of us use today. In her day old hay would have been much easier to get than cardboard ( when was cardboard like we know it invented anyway). You use what you have. The woman was a genius intuitive gardener.

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