[TheForge] Re: Nightshade and conservation, and oops!

[Mike Spencer]

> They all contain atropine and other bitter alkaloids that can lead
> to temporary blindness, rapid palpitating heartbeat and the
> hallucinogenic imagery of halloween with fuzzy halos.This is why
> supermarkets throw out green potatoes though i think the atropine
> risk is overrated.

We grow all our potatoes by spreading a couple of truckloads of
seaweed on sod and just sticking the seed potatoes under the
seaweed.  Produces nice clean potats that are easy to harvest because
we can just scrabble them up from under the seaweed with our hands.

But the seaweed often kinda mats down and gets a little thin in
places, exposing the new potatoes to the sun and those get green on
top.  We store them as they come and just pare away and any "frank
green" when using them.  We've never had a life-threatening or
psychedelic post-potato episode.

While I'm off-topic... We can use the same plot with new seaweed
cover added each year for two or three years, after which the potato
bugs get established in the ground and we get fulminating infestations
early on.  So we just start a new plot somewhere every two or three
years.  After that time, all the sod in the old plot has rotted so
it's really easy to run the tiller through it, add some compost or
manure and plant something else there.

- Mike

-- 
Michael Spencer                  Nova Scotia, Canada       .~. 
                                                           /V\ 
mspencer at tallships.ca                                     /( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/                        ^^-^^