potato lessons

so the potato patch seems to be a total failure,
here is the post on it from before
http://coarsegoldsurvivalgarden.blogspot.com/2013/05/potatoes.html

5 to 10 plants were gone today,
they just look like holes where a plant use to be

so I went and looked closer, decided that the gophers were taking way to much and I better harvest what I can as fast as I can,
but found out that the gophers ate the plants because they ran out of potatoes to eat.
there were tunnels around each plant
so the wood chips are a failure from the point of view of not being able to trap the gophers at all,

next issue is the plants growing in the wood chips,
here is what color the plants should be and it is growing in dirt

here is one growing in the wood chips and the leaves are yellow and the plants are not doing that well

and the other issue with growing them in wood chips is that you can't reach in and harvest the potatoes without hurting the plants like you can if they are in leaves

so the lessons are:
don't let anyone convince you that rotting wood chips are just like rotting leaves,
plants don't grow well in just rotting wood cips,
you can't trap gophers in wood chips,
and you can't harvest the potatoes without hurting the plant like you can if you use rotting leaves.

and here is a kitty that was looking at me as I walked by today