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Potatoes planting through plastic
janetclaire
Posts: 49
in Fruit & veg
Hi we have old lawn we want to turn into a veg patch. I have heard that potatoes can help to 'clean' the ground. Also interested in the 'no dig' idea as we have nearly broken our backs digging our over grown allotment. So...could we plant potaoes into the old lawn (with little or no prep) through black plastic? Thus hopefully killing off the weeds and clearing the ground. I'm thinking I would need slug pellets or nemaslug under the plastic. Only trouble is, it would be difficult for the rain to get to the potatoes. Interested to know if anyone has tried this or am I just mad to even think of it!! Thanks! 
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I don't think potatoes 'clean' the ground, they just help you break up the soil when you dig for them. I don't think planting through the black plastic is a good idea, for your suggested reasons of no water reaching the roots and a haven for slugs. I'm all about avoiding unnecessary labor in the garden, so when I converted lawn to veg garden I built raised beds using concrete blocks (they never rot, are comparable in price to the same size lumber, and don't need replacing every few years like wood sided raised beds). Lay down a thick layer of cardboard directly over the grass inside the bed, toss on whatever organic mater you have to hand (grass clippings, leaves, chopped up tree prunings, manure, the uncomposted contents of your compost bin, etc) and put that on top the cardboard. Then top off with four or five inches of soil/compost. Then you can plant whatever veg you want to grow this year right now.
Thanks for reply Blue Onion. Can I ask how tall you built your beds? Did you put topsoil/multi purpose as the top layer? Just thinking it mught be costly as the beds are quite big size.
The reason that traditionally grown potatoes are said to 'clean the ground' is because the soil has to be cultivated and kept loose so that the potatoes can be earthed up, therefore the gaps between the roes are regularly hoed to be kept free of weeds and the soil is moved about to earth up the potatoes throughout the growing season.
Also as the potatoes grow the foliage becomes thick and one row of potatoes meets the next one, shading out any germinating weeds around them.
Then when the potatoes are lifted the beds are dug over again to get all the tubers, preventing any 'volunteers' growing ... again this keeps the soil cultivated preventing weed growth.
Afraid it's not some magical property that the potatoes have .......... it's the hard work of the gardener that cleans the soil.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
Hi yes I didn't think it was the potatoes but the digging up of them that cleared. Just thought that the plastic would serve two purposes...as earthing up and as weed supressant.
My beds are just a single block lined up next to each other. Mine are about four feet wide by 20 feet long. I have three beds, one for perennials (berries, rhubarb, etc) and two that I use for garden veg. I don't have any pictures to hand, but this one off the internet is the basic idea:
I got cardboard from the grocery store, they had them all broken down flat already. The bricks I got at the DIY store, and took them home ten at a time in the back of my car over several weeks as I found time for a trip there and back. I don't plant into the holes, as it dries out too quickly, but some people do. The bricks are heavy enough they all stay in place, but I can remove them as needed (e.g. dumping loads of compost or manure from the wheelbarrow). The bricks will last for eons, where as treated lumber will get you about four years at most. They are also easy to move around as your needs change. I have a tree that has grown so much in the past four years since I made my gardens that it is shading it now from midafternoon.. some thing I hadn't really anticipated, as I didn't realize how fast it would grow. So this fall I am going to move all the bricks and soil to a new area, well away from any trees.