How do I grow onions and potatoes?

What to grow when? And how? And how do you make the soil better naturally?

• Hello I am a home farmer and I got it to work one season but it will not work any more. Why is this? And just so you have a good idea, I grow garlic, onions, leeks, tomatoes(both big and cherry), potatoes, corn, and different herbs such as sage and Rosemary. How do these grow best? And what rotation should I use to reap the best benefits? (I sell the produce to people in my neighborhood for cheap, It makes good money when I can get the stuff to grow.) Oh and I kind of want to grow strawberries as well but those never grew, how do those grow? And the soil thing, I mean without plant food or fertilizer(remember I'm growing for cheap so I can make more money) I'm retired and not getting quite enough money so that's why I'm doing this. Any suggestions?

• Answer:

  unless you know someone it will cost 'some' money .. nutrients in soil leech out with watering and the plants themselves soak them up so they have to be replaced. Without buying things you will have to get a system going to make replacement 'fertilizer' like compost and manure .. an animal or animals from rabbits to goats to horses to cows will work. If you live close to a farm and have a pickup offer to clean up the farmers field from cow pies and haul them home. The best time is in winter when they feed them in a hay coral and the pies are concentrated in a small area around it .. grab two or three pickup fulls and mix it into the garden plot once year with a power tiller is best .. that in itself will cover most of the nutrient needs if you mix in quite a bit. You can also bag up grass clippings and other green waste to rot down in a bin but that will wind up being alot of work to. I do both and mix a ton of manure and compost into my 30X30 plot each year. also pay attention to what grows best and planting times .. some varieties of plants your going to find flourish in your spot and others never do well .. grow what works .. and plant at the right time is critical to .. dont plant a fall green in mid summer or beans in late fall like that .. now that that is covered you need to pay attention to the layout of your garden to and leave enough space to work the ground around your plants .. depending on the size of your operation you may want to leave enough space to do most of the work with a power tiller but smaller gardens like less than 30 ft square you can do it manually with a hoe .. still leave enough space between rows to work and hoe up every two weeks or so up to about the leaf spread of the plants to aerate the soil and chop in weeds .. dont get too close and hit the roots though .. also on most plants they like to start having the ground hoed at about two weeks of height growth when theyre little and start raking dirt up to the bottom leaves and mound it up to them .. ..now, the best plan for maximum yield is to use a cheap granular weaker fertilizer at hoeing time .. something like 6-6-6 .. you wont need much .. for a 30X30 garden two bags should be more than enough for a season... anyway after you initially hoe the ground to aerate it but before you go back and mound up to your plants take the edge of the hoe and rake it down the leaf line of the plants, not too close i mean not closer than the leafs stick out .. and make a little trench on both sides of the row .. go back with a large cup and shake some of the fertilizer into the trench all the way down both sides then go back and hoe up towards the plants to mound and cover the fertilizer ... water in good ... you can hoe every two weeks and fertilize every second hoeing if theyre going good or you can hit it every time with fertilzer .. just dont use anything too strong .. 6-6-6 is good and cheap .. .. so good luck .. its alot of work to be successful but the results will be worth it .. in the spring summer months keep a good 2 gallon pump up sprayer and some decent bug spray like liquid sevin to mix up to keep the bugs from devouring your beautiful plants .. you wont need much of that .. one quart of liquid sevin should last a year only apply when the bug population is too big to manually pick off ..