Potato Bag Experiment

In May I set up a hessian bag with some manure, compost and potting mix and planted a few pontiac potatoes I had been given.  I've since turned my planned root bed into mainly a potatoe bed for this season, and ll i can say of potatoes is plant them and they will grow.  But back to the bag.
Here is the inital set up with the wire to keep the dog out.  I had supports underneath to raise the back to help with drainage.

As the plant grew i added more compost and manure, but i think it would have been better to just add cane mulch or similar. (Jun2010)

July 2010:

In the process I had a problem with the bottom of the bag rotting away and the soil all coming out.  This may also have been due to the mice that turned up.  They were burrowing holes in the soil.  I ened up catching 5 mice in total using a humane trap that tilts when they go in and the trap door shuts.  I released 2 in the forest and unfortunately the other 3 died in the holding tank I had them in until i could get back to the forest.  Was probably a Co2 overdose.  The other two had survived fine with the air gap I had provided but the extra mouse must have tipped the scales.

After a number of the pants had died back I dug the plant up in august.  I was concerned about the vermin issue so i wanted to get rid of it.  there where a few small new potatoes but nothing great.  all in all the soil was still too damp and i suspect too dense.

In Sep I planted some certified seed potatoes in Bed 1.

I had planned carrots in between the potatoe rows but the mulch has excluded them now

In 1 month they are flourishing

Well I'm Learning

So it's now the end of Oct and over the last 6 months i've learnt a lot from trial and error.  Let's see what I've been up to. My biggest learning was the impact of low sun hours and the low angle of the sun.  My backyard is bounded by high hedgerows and retaining walls and in winter the number of sunhours falling on the beds was probably between 1 and 4.  Much too low to grow crops.  My root bed suffered the most here and I did get some small carrots from it but pretty much every thing else did not grow.

You can see how little growth in the root bed:
April:

May

June

I harvested the carrots late June as I'd got annoyed looking at them and heres the result.  The soil was too clay and poor also and that did not help.  They tasted good though.  You can see a potatoe plant in the bottom left corner of the bed.  This was an experiment with a sebago to see what would happen.  The new potatoes I got from the plant is show with the carrots.

  Next winter I will simply so green manure into this bed or a crop of shade loving veges if i can find some.