About two apple boxes full of potatoes serves me through an entire
year for eating and
for next years seeding.

Years before I would seed only the tiny small ones of the size of my
fingertip or if I had
a large potato to seed I would cut it into sections. But this year I
seeded about 20 full
sized potatoes leftover from winter. And they have done marvellous for
they are waist
high whereas the others are ankle high in growth. So from now on I
want to plant
full sized potatoes along with the small ones.

And I have had trouble with the heavy clay soils so what I did this
year was make
a bed of 4 rows of potatoes and spaded it with horsemanure so that the
topsoil is
1/2 soil and 1/2 horsemanure. The horse manure lightens up the heavy
clay.

plutonium.archimedes@gmail.com wrote:

Rather than thistle being attracted to manure, likely the spading brings
the thistle seed to the surface of the soil. Many small seeds like that
need light to germinate.

M. Reed

monique wrote:

Maybe the horsemanure had some thistle seed as its contents?

Which brings up another line of questioning as for the need of drying
seeds. I had
gathered some rock elm seed of 9 seeds which were green and not dried.
Now mabe
elm seed needs drying or maybe it needs alot of light to germinate
also.