🔗 Save $6,000 A Year with My Complete Amish Home-Saving Method I teach: https://eliasyoder.com
What happens when you grow potatoes in **ONLY LEAVES instead of regular soil?** 🥔🍂 In this video, we put this unusual gardening method to the test to see whether potatoes can actually grow and produce a worthwhile harvest using nothing but leaves.
We’ll take you through the entire process, from preparing the potatoes and building the leaf-growing area to checking their progress and finally revealing what grew underneath. You’ll see the advantages, the problems we encountered, and whether this simple method is actually worth trying in your own garden.
Using leaves could be an inexpensive way to grow potatoes while making use of organic material you may already have around your yard. But does it produce big, healthy potatoes—or is traditional soil still the better option?
Watch until the end to see the **final potato harvest and surprising results!**
If you enjoy experimenting with simple gardening techniques, growing your own food, and discovering unusual ways to improve your harvest, subscribe for more practical gardening videos.
#Potatoes #GrowPotatoes #Gardening #VegetableGarden
What happens when you grow potatoes in **ONLY LEAVES instead of regular soil?** 🥔🍂 In this video, we put this unusual gardening method to the test to see whether potatoes can actually grow and produce a worthwhile harvest using nothing but leaves.
We’ll take you through the entire process, from preparing the potatoes and building the leaf-growing area to checking their progress and finally revealing what grew underneath. You’ll see the advantages, the problems we encountered, and whether this simple method is actually worth trying in your own garden.
Using leaves could be an inexpensive way to grow potatoes while making use of organic material you may already have around your yard. But does it produce big, healthy potatoes—or is traditional soil still the better option?
Watch until the end to see the **final potato harvest and surprising results!**
If you enjoy experimenting with simple gardening techniques, growing your own food, and discovering unusual ways to improve your harvest, subscribe for more practical gardening videos.
#Potatoes #GrowPotatoes #Gardening #VegetableGarden
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00Every fall, all across this country, folks rake up the leaves off their yards,
00:05stuff them into great bags, and set them out at the curb for the truck to haul away,
00:09getting rid of them like so much trash.
00:12And every spring, a good many of those same folks go and buy bags of soil
00:17and bags of mulch to grow their gardens in.
00:20And I have always thought there was something a little bit backwards in that,
00:24hauling away for free the very stuff you turn around and pay for.
00:28My grandmother never in her life let a leaf leave the place.
00:32Every fall, we children were set to raking,
00:35and every last leaf went either onto the garden beds to rot down over winter,
00:40or into a great pile behind the garden that turned, over a year or two,
00:44into the blackest, richest, crumbliest stuff you ever saw, better than any soil.
00:50She called the leaves the tree's yearly gift,
00:53and said only a foolish man throws away a gift.
00:56I have thought of her every autumn since,
00:59watching the bags go out to the curb up and down the road,
01:02and thinking of all that gift going to the dump.
01:05So a while back, I got to wondering a thing.
01:08Those free-fallen leaves, could a body grow potatoes in them,
01:12in nothing but leaves, no soil at all?
01:15Well, I tried it, and today I am going to tell you the honest truth of what happened,
01:20the good and the not-so-good both,
01:22so that you can decide for yourself whether it is worth your doing.
01:26My name is Elias Yoder, and I farm here in Lancaster County in Pennsylvania.
01:31And I will tell you right at the start,
01:33I am going to be straight with you about how this turned out,
01:36for that is the only kind of gardening advice worth a thing.
01:40It is not a miracle, and I will not tell you it is.
01:43But it is a fine, thrifty, near-free way to grow a crop of potatoes,
01:48especially for a body with no good soil to spare,
01:51and once you understand both what it can do and what it cannot,
01:55you may well want to try it yourself.
01:57Before I go on, I will say this once and then leave it be.
02:01I gathered the whole of it,
02:03all these old ways of growing your own food, into a book.
02:07You can find it at EliasYoder.com.
02:09The book is the long version.
02:11If you want it, it is there.
02:13I will not mention it again.
02:15Now the first thing to understand is why this is even possible,
02:19why a potato can grow in leaves with no soil at all,
02:22for it seems a strange thing until you know the secret of the potato.
02:26And the secret is this.
02:28A potato does not form down at its roots the way a carrot or a beet does.
02:33The potatoes, the tubers you eat,
02:35form up along the buried stem of the plant,
02:38up the stalk, wherever that stalk is covered over in the dark.
02:42That is the whole reason we hill potatoes,
02:45why we keep mounding stuff up around the growing stem,
02:48because every bit of stem you bury in the dark grows you more potatoes.
02:53And here is the key that unlocks the whole trick.
02:56That stem does not care one whit
02:58whether the dark stuff mounted around it is soil or straw or leaves.
03:03It only needs to be covered, dark, loose, and damp.
03:07So if leaves can give the stem darkness and damp and room to grow,
03:11then leaves can grow you potatoes, no soil required.
03:15That is the plain principle behind the whole thing.
03:18Now folks have long grown potatoes in straw this same way,
03:22and straw works beautifully.
03:24But not everyone can get straw.
03:25And hay is no good for it,
03:27for hay is full of seeds that will sprout up into a mess of grass and weeds all through your
03:32bed.
03:33Leaves, though.
03:34Leaves are free.
03:35And near everyone can get them,
03:37either off their own yard,
03:39or, better yet,
03:40going round and collecting the bags the neighbors set out at the curb every fall.
03:44Free for the taking.
03:46A whole winter's worth of growing material that folks are glad to be rid of.
03:50So leaves it is.
03:51So let me walk you through how I did it,
03:54and then I will give you the honest result.
03:56First, the planting.
03:58And it could hardly be simpler.
03:59Simpler even than planting in soil.
04:02You do not dig.
04:03You do not bury anything.
04:05You just lay your seed potatoes right down on the ground,
04:08or on a bit of soil in a bed or a bucket,
04:11spacing them a good six inches apart,
04:13and that is the planting done.
04:16No digging a trench.
04:17No burying.
04:18Just set them on top.
04:20For remember,
04:21the potatoes will form up the stem above them,
04:24so there is no need to bury the seed potato at all,
04:27which is exactly what lets us grow the whole thing in leaves.
04:31Now the leaves themselves,
04:33and here is the one bit that takes a little doing,
04:36and where I must give you a real caution.
04:39You cannot just pile whole leaves on top,
04:43especially the big broad ones,
04:45for here is the trouble.
04:46Whole leaves wet down,
04:49matte together into a solid, slimy layer,
04:52like wet paper stuck flat,
04:54and that matted layer does two bad things.
04:57It suffocates your potato sprouts trying to push up through it,
05:01and it sheds the water off like a roof
05:04instead of letting it soak through
05:06so the bed underneath goes dry.
05:09So the leaves must be broken up,
05:11chopped or shredded,
05:13so they lie loose and airy,
05:15and let the water and the sprouts through.
05:17Now the modern fellow reaches for his machine to do this,
05:21but you and I will do it the old way,
05:24and there are several.
05:25The easiest is to use leaves
05:27that are already part-rotted down,
05:29last year's leaves from the bottom of an old leaf pile,
05:33all crumbled and broken,
05:34what gardeners call leaf mold,
05:37which is perfect for this
05:38and needs no chopping at all.
05:41Or you gather your fresh leaves into a pile
05:44and chop through them with a sharp spade,
05:46or run over them a few times with a hand-push reel mower,
05:50or even just gather them good and dry
05:52and crush and crumble them up,
05:54for dry leaves crush easily to bits.
05:57Any way that leaves them broken and loose
06:00rather than whole and flat will do.
06:03Broken leaves, not whole ones.
06:06That is the thing to remember.
06:08So, with your seed potatoes laid on top
06:11and your broken leaves ready,
06:13you cover the potatoes over
06:14with a good 5 inches or so
06:16of the loose chopped leaves,
06:18tucking them in all around,
06:20and then you water the whole bed down well
06:23to settle it and start the potatoes sprouting.
06:25And if you like, work a bit of good compost
06:29or old rotted manure in among the leaves,
06:32and I will tell you plainly,
06:34I would do this, for reasons I will come to.
06:37Then you wait.
06:39In a week and a half or so,
06:41your potato sprouts come pushing up green
06:43through the leaves,
06:44and it is a fine sight.
06:46And now begins the one job
06:48you must keep up with all through the growing,
06:51which is the hilling,
06:52the mounding up of more leaves
06:54around the stems as they grow.
06:56This is the very heart of growing potatoes
06:59any which way, so hear it.
07:01As the stems grow up tall,
07:03you keep heaping more broken leaves
07:06up around them,
07:07burying more and more of that stem in the dark,
07:10for every bit of buried stem,
07:12as I told you,
07:13grows you more potatoes.
07:14So all season,
07:16as the plants grow,
07:18you keep adding leaves,
07:19hilling them up higher and higher,
07:21and the more stem you bury,
07:23the bigger your crop.
07:25And here is a plain safety word that matters,
07:28tied to that hilling,
07:29so do not skip it.
07:31You must keep the growing potatoes covered,
07:33always,
07:34whether with leaves or soil,
07:36and never let them poke out into the light.
07:39For a potato that is left exposed to the sun
07:42turns green,
07:43and a green potato is not good to eat.
07:46It is turned mildly poisonous,
07:48and you must cut away any green part
07:50or throw it out.
07:52So keep them well covered,
07:54hill them up faithfully,
07:55and never eat a green potato.
07:58That is the one real safety rule
08:01of potato growing,
08:02and it holds whether you grow in soil or leaves.
08:06Then you tend it through the season,
08:08watering on the hot, dry days,
08:10for a bed of leaves can dry out,
08:12and you watch it grow.
08:14And now let me give you the honest result,
08:16the whole point of the thing,
08:18for I promised you the truth.
08:20The good news first.
08:22It works.
08:23It truly does.
08:24The potatoes sprouted up fine,
08:26and grew tall and green
08:28and healthy looking all season,
08:30every bit as lush up top
08:32as one's grown in soil.
08:34And at the end,
08:36when the plants died back,
08:37and I dug down into those leaves,
08:39there were the potatoes,
08:41clean and sound,
08:42grown in nothing but leaves.
08:45So yes,
08:46you can grow potatoes in only leaves,
08:48and that is a wonderful thing,
08:51especially for a body with poor soil,
08:53or no soil,
08:55or growing on a hard patch of ground,
08:57or a paved spot
08:58where nothing else could go.
09:00But now the honest part,
09:02and I will not hide it from you,
09:04for that would make me no better
09:06than the fellows selling miracles.
09:08The crop of potatoes I got from the leaves
09:11was smaller than the crop I got
09:13growing the very same way in good soil.
09:16Fewer potatoes and smaller ones.
09:19The plants grew tall,
09:21but a bit weak and floppy,
09:23not standing sturdy
09:24the way the soil-grown ones did,
09:26and the harvest,
09:27while real and worth having,
09:29was lighter.
09:30So I will not tell you
09:32leaves beat soil,
09:34for they do not.
09:35Good, rich soil grows you
09:38a bigger, better potato crop,
09:40plain and simple,
09:41and if you have good soil,
09:43use it.
09:44But hear why the leaves came up short,
09:47for in the why
09:48is how you make it better.
09:50Two reasons, I believe.
09:52First, the leaves,
09:54being so light and loose,
09:56sank and settled down
09:57a great deal as they rotted,
09:59so that what started as a deep bed
10:01shrank to a shallow one,
10:03and I did not keep topping it up enough,
10:06so there was less depth of dark stem
10:08than I meant.
10:09And second,
10:10plain leaves alone
10:12are not very rich,
10:13they are mostly just bulk,
10:15not much feeding in them by themselves,
10:18where soil holds a whole world of feeding.
10:20So the potatoes had room
10:23and dark aplenty,
10:24but not so much to eat.
10:26And that tells you exactly
10:28how to do better than I did,
10:29if you try it.
10:31Keep piling on more leaves
10:33all season long,
10:34far more than you think you need,
10:37topping the bed up again and again
10:39as it sinks,
10:40to keep that stem deep in the dark.
10:43And do not grow in only leaves
10:45if you want a good crop,
10:47mix in some good compost
10:49or rotted manure
10:50or a bit of soil among the leaves,
10:52or feed the bed along through the season
10:55with a manure tea,
10:56so the plants have something to eat
10:58as well as somewhere to grow.
11:00Do that.
11:02Leaves for the bulk and darkness,
11:04and compost for the feeding,
11:06and you close most of the gap
11:08and grow yourself a fine crop
11:10from what was near all free material.
11:13Let me say a plain word
11:15about who profits from you
11:16not knowing this,
11:18and it is no dark scheme.
11:20Potatoes are cheap enough at the store,
11:22that is true,
11:23but the growing soil
11:25and the mulch
11:26and the bagged mixes
11:27that folks buy to garden in
11:28are not cheap,
11:29and they are sold by the bag
11:31year on year.
11:33And there is no money at all
11:35in a man learning
11:36that the leaves his neighbors
11:38set out at the curb for free
11:39every fall
11:40would grow him potatoes,
11:42would fill his beds,
11:44would feed his soil
11:45for nothing.
11:47Nobody earns a wage
11:49teaching you
11:49that the thing everyone throws away
11:51is the thing you could grow in.
11:54There is no bag to sell
11:55in a pile of free leaves.
11:57So every autumn,
11:59a whole country's worth
12:00of good free growing material
12:02gets hauled off to the dump,
12:04and every spring,
12:05folks drive to the store
12:06to buy bags
12:07of the very same sort of thing
12:09and never see the circle
12:11they are caught in.
12:12It is not hidden.
12:14It is only never taught,
12:15for your leaf pile
12:17is the store's quiet loss.
12:19The money runs toward
12:20the bag on the shelf
12:22and away from the leaves
12:23on your own lawn,
12:24and it always has.
12:26So there is the whole
12:28honest truth of it.
12:29You can grow potatoes
12:30in nothing but leaves,
12:32for the potato forms up
12:33its buried stem
12:34and cares not whether
12:36that stem is buried
12:37in soil or in leaves.
12:40Lay your seed potatoes
12:41right on top,
12:42no digging.
12:43Cover them deep
12:44in broken chopped leaves,
12:46never whole matted ones,
12:48and hill up more and more
12:50all season as they grow
12:51and as the leaves sink.
12:54Keep the tubers
12:55always covered from the light
12:56so they do not green.
12:58And be honest with yourself
12:59that leaves alone
13:01give a lighter crop
13:02than good soil.
13:03So mix in compost
13:05and keep piling on the leaves
13:07to grow the best crop
13:08you can.
13:09Do that
13:10and you turn
13:11a curbside pile
13:12of somebody's
13:13raked up trash
13:14into a harvest
13:15of your own potatoes,
13:16which is about as fine
13:18a piece of thrift
13:19as I know.
13:20Tell me down in the comments
13:22what county you garden in
13:24and whether you have
13:25ever grown potatoes
13:26in leaves or straw,
13:27and what kind of harvest
13:28you got,
13:29for I would dearly love
13:31to hear how it went
13:32for others,
13:32whether it beat mine
13:34or fell short.
13:35And if you have a trick
13:37for keeping the leaves
13:38from matting
13:39or for growing
13:40a bigger crop in them,
13:41put it down there,
13:42for that is just the knowledge
13:44the next fellow needs.
13:46Next time out here
13:47I want to show you
13:48how to build
13:48a proper compost pile
13:50the old way,
13:52layer upon layer,
13:53for those very leaves,
13:55which grow a fair potato crop
13:57on their own,
13:58make some of the finest
13:59compost there is
14:00once they rot down proper
14:02and mixing that rich compost
14:04in with the leaves
14:05is exactly how you
14:07close the gap
14:08I told you about.
14:09It is the foundation
14:10under all of it
14:12and it is past time
14:13I showed you.
14:14But for now,
14:16remember this.
14:17There is treasure
14:18lying at the curb
14:19in every neighborhood
14:20every fall,
14:22bagged up
14:23and thrown away.
14:24The fallen leaves
14:25that will grow your food
14:27and feed your soil
14:28for nothing
14:29if you only know
14:31their worth.
14:32The old people
14:33would have been struck
14:34dumb at the sight
14:35of good leaves
14:36hauled off to the dump,
14:37for they wasted nothing
14:39and knew that
14:40what falls to the ground
14:41is meant to feed
14:43what grows next.
14:44The people who built
14:46this country
14:46with their hands
14:47knew that
14:48and we are only
14:49just starting
14:50to remember it.