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

[Peter Fels And Phoebe Palmer]

And here i thought it was oxalic acid in the potato skin..poor 
beat-up memory...tisk.
Mike, what kind of seaweed, and is it chopped up? Rinsed? Salt 
buildup on the soil?
When i lived at Piedras Blancas, the first big swells of winter 
would rip up the luxuriant summer beds of giant kelp and heap 
them up on the beach...sometimes yards thick. Then the waves 
would cover them with sand after a while and they'd stew.
The smell was such that the tourists were no bother at all that 
time of year.
Days of wire brushing behind me...days of wire brushing in my 
future...stainless bristles sticking out of me every 
evening...Gaaaak! I hate finishing!...pf

Mike Spencer wrote:
>> 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
>