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Re: SqFt e-mail, and sqft potato experiment report

First, the admin part:
Our entire campus network was down for about 2.5 days over the holiday
weekend, so the listserv was affected (as was the library - no catalog!).

Now to the garden part:
A few weeks ago, I mentioned that I was going to try to plant a seed potato
in a tall 1' diameter plastic container within one of my framed 4'x4' beds.
I actually got two identical containers, buried one in the bed and left
the other standing out free, both with similar seed potatoes and both
with numerous holes cut in the bottom and filled about 1/2 way with soil.

I can now report that the buried one was a disaster. It didn't drain
and the seed potato rotted to mush, never putting out any leaves at all.
After noting that the stand-alone one had leaves topping the container
but no sign of life from the buried one, I dug it out, discovered
the mush that was the seed potato, and have started it anew standing free
with another seed potato.

I think the problem was drainage - we have very rainy springs here
in St. Louis. I guess the standing free one drained but the water table
a foot down was already so soggy from the rest of the ground drainage
that the buried one's water had nowhere to go.

Anyway, I've started several more potatoes (Kennebac and Red Pontiac
varieties)
in various large plastic containers. So technically they aren't part of
the "square foot" garden. But since I wasn't willing to devote an
entire precious 4x4 bed, and I couldn't figure out how otherwise to
do the hilling thing without the soil eroding onto the other plants
within a framed bed, this may work out best.

Melissa S.
St. Louis, MO., where tomato plants are under two feet tall, and just
barely starting to flower


At 10:26 AM 5/26/97 -0500, you wrote:
>At 10:02 AM 5/26/97 -0400, you wrote:
> >Ed in SW Illinois
>>
>>Note:  Any other sqft'ers on Gardens having trouble with the mail???  I
>>haven't received any mail this weekend.
>
>I didn't receive any Sqft e-mail over the weekend either.
>I thought I would get a bunch this morning (Monday), but I didn't. Maybe
>it's because of the Memorial Day weekend(?)
>I sent a message on Saturday but I don't know if it was posted or not.
>Clark,   Harper, TX  zone 8
>
Melissa Silvestre  silvest@umslvma.umsl.edu   http://www.umsl.edu/~silvest/
Reference Librarian, University of Missouri-St. Louis   (314) 516-6473

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