Rookie Topic: Potatoes

Thanks for your informative post Cheyanne. Potatoes are new to me and a crop I will be planting this coming growing season. I have already built a 3X3 2' tall raised bed for the occasion and your post will provide me with guidance when planting time arrives.

Thank you Bob, it was a fun topic to write about. The more articles I read the more and more I learned. Potatoes are one of those things that there seems there will always be able to learn something more about! Good luck this spring, potatoes, for me, have been one of the easiest crops I have grown yet!

Thanks for the great post, cheyannarach.  I'm going to try some this spring and will refer back to this.

I also want to try planting a very few now.  I found this article on fall planting that I found interesting: 

http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles/williams48.html

Granted, the guy is in NC, but I may be able to pull it off here on the Cape.  It's worth a try.  Heading out to plant them now.

CC

Thanks for sharing CC, that's an interesting way to grow potatoes. If I have one sprouting in my cabinet when I get home I may be tempted to try it. We have pretty cold winters but it would be worth knowing if it would work here! I would think you being 2 zones warmer than me should be able to pull it off! Good luck and keep us posted!

Great post Cheyanne.

Folks, don't forget about the other rookie topics found in the general sfg forum.

I thought I would add a little to Cheyanne's good font of knowledge.

Potatoes get scab in soils too rich or they can produce huge amounts of vegetation but not tubers. Also they share blights and such with tomatoes and so should not be planted where tomatoes or peppers or eggplant have been recently and vice versa.
The trick with scab prevention is to use very well finished composts and then supplement with something like bonemeal that is not heavy in N and won't rise the Ph too much. Use mulches that are lower Ph. Luckily Mels Mix fits this pretty well, if the compost part is low enough in N and high enough in P,K and calcium. For mulch straw works but in my experience is such an ideal slug home that they eat the plants. Alfalfa hay works great as does shredded leaves and pine needles. I bet wood chips ala BTE style would work great.

I don't know much about deterring Potato beetles etc. Thankfully

I have very good success with the potato bug problem this year in that I planted my potatoes later than I normally do and I missed the first wave of potato bugs the second wave a potato bugs never found my crop.

http://potatoes.wsu.edu/varieties/vars-all.htm

Thanks Cheyannarach and everyone else for this info.  We were just talking about potatoes yesterday.  Got our TH all ready!

Keep in mind that potatoes like acidic soil.  I'm on the Texas Gulf Coast and my soil is basically alkaline or Mel's Mix in the boxes.  Supposedly, Mel's Mix is basically neutral - neither alkaline or acidic - somewhere in between.  This is the first year I grew potatoes in 4' x 4' boxes.  A friend sent me a video on growing LOTS of potatoes in a 2' x 2' box and continuing to add soil as the plants grew; as well as additional boards on the box.  I went and checked this out on YouTube Video; as people were opening their boxes to harvest the potatoes.  Most of these people with the boxes only had 2-4 potatoes in the box.  Very disappointed.

However, there was a woman who grew her potatoes this same way in a 55-gallon garbage can.  I don't condone plastic, but this woman had added layers of pine needles to her soil to add acidity.  Here method produced 7.5 gallons of potatoes.  I was really impressed.  I'm sure you can find these videos to view by going to YouTube Video and doing a search for "Potato Box."

I did three 4' x 4' boxes (12 inches deep each) in Mel's Mix.  In the first box, I shredded pine needles that I bought at the nursery and mixed it in with the Mel's Mix.  In the other two boxes, I just did Mel's Mix.  These boxes were all planted two days apart each.  I was SHOCKED with this experiment as the first box I planted with the pine needles shredded and mixed in EXPLODED we GORGEOUS, FULL, BEAUTIFUL potato plants.  The other two boxes were severely lagging behind.  So when I hilled the potatoes the first time, I added shredded pine needles as a mulch in the other two boxes.  These plants grew substantially, but nothing like the first box where I shredded and mixed the pine needles into the Mel's Mix.  I have had to add another cedar picket to the first box to keep the soil from falling out as I hilled them.  It's time to hill them again and I'm just waiting for the rain to stop so I can.  Just wanted to pass on a tip that seems to really work.  I'm looking forward to both Red Pontiac and Yukon Gold potatoes soon.  I also planted my potatoes in furrows.  I got three furrows per box and it averaged out to one seed potato piece/square foot.  The potatoes actually grow inside the furrows and that's why you continue to hill them as the plants grow.

I was following all the stories about those potato boxes during the period everyone was trying them and followed their progress.  Seems like no one knew that there are different potato varieties that need to be used when you keep growing the potatoes up in a box.

only certain types of potatoes will work in a potato grow box or garbage can potatoes that you want to keep adding soil to get more tubers.....

you will want to plant a long season potato or fingerlings, and even some reds will work too....

short season potatoes like Yukon gold's only put out one set of tubers so hilling them to get a larger harvest will not work....these potatoes you only want to add some hilling to make sure that if any push up thru the soil/MM they don't turn green from the sun.....green potatoes are poisonous.....

happy gardening
rose

Here's a nice intro to what indeterminate and determinate mean.

The descriptions apply to tomatoes, potatoes, beans, peppers, and peas.

http://seasonalontariofood.blogspot.com/2012/11/determinate-and-indeterminate-vegetables.html

We did a bit of an experiment on potato growing a couple years ago on this forum.
It was discussed pretty thoroughly different types of potato plant growth and various methods.
Potato Growing Methods

I put the tiny potatoes right back in my soil last fall as an experiment. Our ground never freezes, so I thought I would play around with potatoes that wouldn't be useful anyway.

Similar to the "Irish Potatoes" article, I covered them with compost and material that would compost over the winter while insulating them. Several of them have already come up nicely and one is huge with beautiful, lush foliage.



I'm looking forward to seeing how the crop fairs!

audrey.jeanne.roberts wrote:I put the tiny potatoes right back in my soil last fall as an experiment. 

I did the same thing, but my area freezes and nothing has come up yet.  I'll post back here if it works. 

Meanwhile, I can't grow potatoes in a 5 gal bucket even though I've tried twice.  BUT, apparently I can grow them in a bowl of water sitting on the floor in the dining room.  This potato has been in this bowl since last fall: 
  
No leaves to speak of but lots of baby potatoes.  Not sure what do to with it except maybe plant it out with the others once it's time?

CC

Cute!  It's a spud nursery   

That's what I would do, just put 'er in the ground!

On my early plants - when my potatoes were this size last year the leaves were eaten up by pests, it seems the early "out of season" aspect is really working to my advantage thus far.

Stupid question but I can't find the answer.  What are seed potatoes?  Are they simply the smallest potatoes from the harvest?  If so, I have lots of 1" "seed" potatoes that I would like to replant.

I see the bags for sale but they look like my runts.

Sanderson, "seed potatoes" are simply potatoes that are (supposedly) certified disease free that you can cut up and plant after they start sprouting.

You can do the same with potatoes from the store as long as you trust them.  But if you have any suspicions at all - something "just doesn't look right" - skip it.

We found some at Wally-world - russets, reds, golds.

Here is a good writeup. Potatoes propagate by tubers. The ones selected from a harvest for the next generation are the 'seed potatoes'. They can be any size, but must have enough eyes for new plants to grow. If the seed potato is large with multiple eyes it can be chitted then planted. Seed potatoes should be taken from disease free plants , so as to not propagate the disease. Blight is an example of such a disease. Does this help? 
http://gardening.about.com/od/vegetable1/ss/What-Are-Seed-Potatoes.htm