My backup starch supply started as a couple of jerusalem artichokes dropped in a hole in the ground. They thrive on neglect, look like tall weeds, store themselves in the ground and don't need to be replanted every year.

Sunchokes don't agree with everyone's digestive system. I wonder if 'taters can be left to go wild like that?

Fall through mid-winter sunchokes consist mainly of inulin, a complex starch that humans CAN'T digest, but fart-making bacteria can eat just fine.

However, in late winter enzymes in sunchoke tubers begin breaking down the inulin into the simpler sugars the plant needs to grow...and that can also be digested as easily as potato starches. It's really quite fascinating, about the time the Native Americans had used up their winter stockpile of food and were facing starvation the sunchoke (aka Jerusalem artichoke) tubers suddenly were able to give them nourishment.

-Blast

edit: fixed to "humans CAN'T digest"

Blast, my understanding was that the bacteria finally do break it down into something digestible. Perhaps not very efficiently.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inulin#Fate_in_vivo

Good to know that they are more digestible in late winter, though. I had read that they are best following the first hard frost.

"I wonder if 'taters can be left to go wild like that?"

Kinda-sorta... any little 'taters you missed during harvesting will probably sprout the following spring, although that may depend on how hard your winters are. If any sprout in spring, they also tend to be green with solanine, so you can't eat those, but green ones may be just fine as seed potatoes. (They may not be green if they are deep enough, but my chickens always uncover mind.)

If you deliberately left some smaller ones there, marked the edges of the bed, and sprinkled the area with a complete organic fertilizer in spring (no lime or ashes!), and then covered the bed with 3" or so of collected leaves or fluffed straw, adding more as the tops got taller, you might just have a decent harvest.

I think the big issue is disease -- the longer potatoes grow in the same place, the greater the chance for disease. If you started out with certified disease-free seed stock, you might postpone it, but potatoes have the reputation of being disease magnets.

This just a theory I would like to try someday, AFTER I have tightened up the interior fencing so the chickens stay out of the area. Unless a disease gets started in the soil from repeated use, it should work.

Right now, I just set aside the small potatoes at harvest and put them in an airy container and just let them sprout in spring, and put them in a new bed. This will be the third year for the same potato stock, so I'll see how it goes.

Sue

Great, and helpful, information Blast. Thanks.

Who needs buckets? We live "out in the country" by most city slickers standards. We are enjoying partaking of the wild edibles coming up in our yard, which is left to go au naturale (much to the neighbor's dismay I am certain). Currently in are dandelions, wild violets, and wild onions. We are waiting for sour grass to come up, and experimenting to see what else comes up or that we can identify that is edible. Spring is a yummy time of year here

The 'buckets' concept has a lot of merit -- not only for urbanites, but for people like me who live in zones with a limited growing season. It doesn't take much to move a few buckets twice a day -- first into the sun once the temps are up, and later to a warm location to avoid the evening frost.

-Doug, who is hungry for gardening, but can't plant until mid-May