Calling potato experts - another question!

[i_am2bz]

My tater experiment continues...

...and my Red Pontiac plants are ready to bolt (if that's the right word when speaking of tater plants forming flowers). Is that a good thing or bad thing? Does that mean they're done growing, so I can stop hilling? I could probably mulch them another 6 inches or so.

I understand that I don't start digging for my harvest until the plants have died back...right?

 

[Ridgerunner]

Does that mean they're done growing, so I can stop hilling?

They are done growing. They are now making potatoes underneath. You can stop hilling.

I understand that I don't start digging for my harvest until the plants have died back...right?

Sort of. In a couple of weeks you can grovel in the hills to try to find small potatoes, called new potatoes. Many people really like them. Some recipes call for those thin-skinned new potatoes. But if you want to store them, you want to wait until they are fully mature, which means the plants die back.

If you grovel in to get the new potatoes, you will reduce your harvest.

 

[i_am2bz]

So...do the taters actually start growing from the stem, the part that is buried under the mulch/straw/soil? I noticed the plants have "branches" going out from the main stem, but then also small leaves sticking out along the main stem as well. I was wondering if that's where I'll find the taters. (Yep, I have no clue what I'm doing! )

 

[Ridgerunner]

These drawings might help.

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl...a=X&ei=WgnRTbjFBYXAtgfIvdyCDg&ved=0CEsQ9QEwAw

 

[i_am2bz]

These drawings might help.

Hmmmf. Well, does this mean all the taters grow directly from the roots underground? In which case, what's the point of doing all the hilling above-ground? I is confused!

 

[patandchickens]

Taters are like 'maters. They grow roots out from the buried part of the stem. That is why you hill potatoes up, so they will grow more roots out from the stem. Then once the flowers form, the little bits on the roots that are gonna become potatoes start enlarging and, um, potatifying. The plant won't form any more "potatifying" roots after flowering starts, plus if you keep hilling you may accidentally damage some of the ones that ARE there and ARE developing.

Thus sayeth my mother, anyhow, who got her PhD at Cornell back in the '40s working on potatoes.

(Well, she didn't say "potatifying", that part I made up )

Pat

 

[i_am2bz]

Thanks Pat - I think I get it now!

I had to buy a bale of wheat straw to hill/mulch the dang things, they were gettin' so tall & I ran out of soil to use! :/

 

[Ridgerunner]

Since potatoes form above where the seed potato was, you hill them up aboveground to create more underground to give them more underground to develop in.

 

[i_am2bz]

Yeah, that's what I was wondering, if you hill around the stem so that taters will form underneath...so theorectically, the taller the plant & the higher you hill, the more taters will form...? Until the flowers form, at least. Do I have that right?

 

[digitS']

You may have that right but keep in mind that it is the leaf that does the photosynthesis.

Younger leaves do most of the work so you can bury some of the older leaves without much harm, however, the leaves are making your food.

This idea that a gardener can just keep piling stuff on a plant, every time a leaf appears out in the open, and gain some benefit from that is just bizarre to me. The plant will just expend all of its energy growing a longer and longer stem trying to reach the light and open air. Photosynthesis can not take place underground in the dark.

Keeping the tubers covered is important for usefulness and many plants of different species benefit from having fresh fertile soil gathered around them where nutrients can wash down to the roots. But, all the parts of a plant have a purpose and green leaves are critical to growth and food production.

Steve

This is a drawing of a corn plant but the process is the same. The corn will store glucose in seeds. The potato will change the glucose to starch and store the starch in the tuber.