Potatoes gone wild!

efirvin 6/5/2012, 3:35 pm

Hello all!

Since the warm weather hit the potatoes have gone crazy! I have a drip system thru out the plots and everything gets watered for 15 minutes daily. Is this too much watering? Is the potatoes growing normally? I planted 4 seed potato pieces per square and the squares are now full and growing tall.

Here's a pix. What do you think?

SwampCatNana 6/5/2012, 6:33 pm

I think SFG boxes are too shallow for potatoes. Have you been hilling them as they grow? It's difficult to see with the netting(?) over it.
Lee

**RoOsTeR** 6/5/2012, 6:39 pm

SwampCatNana wrote:I think SFG boxes are too shallow for potatoes. Have you been hilling them as they grow? It's difficult to see with the netting(?) over it.
Lee

Sure you can, and if you want to go a little deeper you can add a top hat.

SwampCatNana 6/5/2012, 6:47 pm

RoOsTeR wrote:
SwampCatNana wrote:I think SFG boxes are too shallow for potatoes. Have you been hilling them as they grow? It's difficult to see with the netting(?) over it.
Lee

Sure you can, and if you want to go a little deeper you can add a top hat.

But I don't see that here.

westx 6/5/2012, 7:13 pm

IMHO you planted to many seeds per square, I plant one per square foot but other then that they look fine. Watch out for flowers starting to form and keep them pinched off so the plants will continue produce tubers. Just dug mine this weekend and got an overflowing 5 gallon bucket out of an 8x4 box. Did find it interesting that even though I planted the seeds 14" deep and backfilled the box until it all the soil was back in that the potatoes only grew in about 6"s of soil, so going that deed was a waist of time.

**RoOsTeR** 6/5/2012, 7:23 pm

https://squarefoot.forumotion.com/t12722-starting-to-get-potatoes#125710

efirvin 6/6/2012, 12:23 pm

SwampCatNana wrote:I think SFG boxes are too shallow for potatoes. Have you been hilling them as they grow? It's difficult to see with the netting(?) over it.
Lee

Oops, sorry. You can't tell from this pix but my planters are 16 deep. I planted them deep, per SFG directions, and backfilled the MM until all the soil was back in place. 12" of the soil was MM and the bottom filler was compost purchased from the city.

efirvin 6/6/2012, 12:31 pm

westx wrote:IMHO you planted to many seeds per square, I plant one per square foot but other then that they look fine. Watch out for flowers starting to form and keep them pinched off so the plants will continue produce tubers. Just dug mine this weekend and got an overflowing 5 gallon bucket out of an 8x4 box. Did find it interesting that even though I planted the seeds 14" deep and backfilled the box until it all the soil was back in that the potatoes only grew in about 6"s of soil, so going that deed was a waist of time.

Ok. I planted 4 per sf per the SFG book. In the couple of squares that were less than 1'x1' I planted only 2 or 3. I have 2 rows of Reds and 1 of Yukon golds.

Didn't know needed to pinch off flowers early, I thought that was the sign when the potatoes were ready.

**llama momma** 6/6/2012, 12:40 pm

I'm with you Efirvin -
the book doesn't say to pinch them off either.
So I went out and 1/2 the plants I left alone to flower. The others I pinched off the immature green unblossomed flowers. See how much difference it makes.

efirvin 6/6/2012, 1:05 pm

llama momma wrote:I'm with you Efirvin -
the book doesn't say to pinch them off either.
So I went out and 1/2 the plants I left alone to flower. The others I pinched off the immature green unblossomed flowers. See how much difference it makes.

Good idea! Always learning something new!

Squat_Johnson 6/6/2012, 1:09 pm

That's not too many per square. That's what I did, and mine looked like that a month ago. You are right on track for a nice sack-o-taters in my opinion.

BTW, the blossoms can create a potato fruit. See this discussion of potato seeds (not seed potatoes).
https://squarefoot.forumotion.com/t12521-has-anyone-heard-of-potato-seeds-not-seed-potatoes

efirvin 6/6/2012, 1:28 pm

Squat_Johnson wrote:That's not too many per square. That's what I did, and mine looked like that a month ago. You are right on track for a nice sack-o-taters in my opinion.

BTW, the blossoms can create a potato fruit. See this discussion of potato seeds (not seed potatoes).
https://squarefoot.forumotion.com/t12521-has-anyone-heard-of-potato-seeds-not-seed-potatoes

Thanks! I read that discussion and thought it very interesting! I'll be watching for any potato fruit!

gregrenee88 6/6/2012, 5:50 pm

Wow, those are crazy! Ours (red potatoes) are quite big but not as big as yours. We've stopped putting dirt on top because it would all fall out of the box. They look really healthy but no flowers as of yet. They are actually shadowing our pepper plants which might explain their slow growth. Wink

Renee

efirvin 6/6/2012, 6:06 pm

gregrenee88 wrote:Wow, those are crazy! Ours (red potatoes) are quite big but not as big as yours. We've stopped putting dirt on top because it would all fall out of the box. They look really healthy but no flowers as of yet. They are actually shadowing our pepper plants which might explain their slow growth.
Renee

2 of the 3 rows are red potatoes, the other row is Yukon golds. My 4th row has 3 sf of carrots and 1 of lettuces and I understand the shadowing issue. I have cut off a few potato leaves that were encroaching too much.

gregrenee88 6/7/2012, 10:48 am

efirvin wrote:
gregrenee88 wrote:Wow, those are crazy! Ours (red potatoes) are quite big but not as big as yours. We've stopped putting dirt on top because it would all fall out of the box. They look really healthy but no flowers as of yet. They are actually shadowing our pepper plants which might explain their slow growth.
Renee

2 of the 3 rows are red potatoes, the other row is Yukon golds. My 4th row has 3 sf of carrots and 1 of lettuces and I understand the shadowing issue. I have cut off a few potato leaves that were encroaching too much.

Can cutting back the potato leaves damage what is going on down-under?

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