Growing potatoes, a questionnaire

[MontyJ]

There has been some talk of combining our efforts to create some gardening articles to boost the already vast amount of knowledge available on TEG. Since many of us are cooped up for the winter, doing not much more than thumbing through seed catalogs and waiting for the first warm rays of spring, I thought this would be a good time to get started and maybe give something back to the site we all love so much.

I have created a questionnaire on growing potatoes so I can gather information from as many members as possible, then use that information to write an article about it. Why potatoes? I don't know, figured we have to start somewhere.

Answer the questions below, in as much detail as possible. Note especially any regional requirements you are aware of to make this as informative as possible for anyone who may read it. We all know gardening is regional, so the more zone specific information we can gather, the better. Also, if you think of a question or piece of information not covered in the questionnaire, please post it and I will edit it into this post.

Thanks folks!

1. What is your zone?

2. What varieties of potatoes do you plant?

3. Where do you get your seed potatoes?

4. What insect or disease pressures have you faced?

5. How do you combat those insect or disease pressures?

6. When do you plant your potatoes?

7. How deep do you plant them?

8. Do you cut your seed potatoes?

9. Do you treat the cut pieces? If so, what do you threat them with?

10. Do you hill your potatoes? If not, do you notice any crop loss?

11. When do you harvest your potatoes?

12. How or where do you store your harvested potatoes?

13. What particular challenges to growing potatoes do you face in your zone? And how do you overcome those challenges?

14. Do you have any specific information that might help others successfully grow potatoes in your particular zone?

****15. What type of soil do you have?****

****Indicates questions added after the original post****

I feel like a reporter interviewing some of the very best gardeners in the world.

 

[Ridgerunner]

1. What is your zone?
Border of 6/7

2. What varieties of potatoes do you plant?
Kennebek and Red Pontiac

3. Where do you get your seed potatoes?
Local gardening store

4. What insect or disease pressures have you faced?
Blister beetles and potato beetles.
Wireworms.
Voles
Rotting in the ground if the weather really turns wet.

5. How do you combat those insect or disease pressures?
Blister beetles and potato beetles. – Sevin
Wireworms. – Crop rotation
Voles & Rotting in the ground if the weather really turns wet. – Use language my Mommy would not approve of. Dig them early if they start rotting

6. When do you plant your potatoes?
Usually mid to late March. The timing is based more on when I can get good seed potatoes than just my preference. See my last comment on physiological age.

7. How deep do you plant them?
Make a furrow in the ground maybe 1-1/2”, not much more than to cover them.

8. Do you cut your seed potatoes?
Depends on the size. I usually select small potatoes and plant them whole, but if they are big enough I cut them in two, making sure there are several eyes on each piece.

9. Do you treat the cut pieces? If so, what do you threat them with?
No treatment. I put them straight in the ground.

10. Do you hill your potatoes? If not, do you notice any crop loss?
Yes I hill them, usually twice though sometimes three times. This makes them a lot easier to dig plus it covers the potatoes to protect them from turning green with the sunlight hitting them. Often after they are forming and it dries out, the hill will crack, exposing the developing potatoes to sunlight, which can make them poisonous. I usually take a shovel and toss some more dirt on them at this stage to protect them from sunlight.

11. When do you harvest your potatoes?
When the vines die back.

12. How or where do you store your harvested potatoes?
In a wooden box in my garage. It’s too warm and too dry so they don’t last really long. I just don’t have a good spot. When they start to root or rot, I make a lot of soup.

13. What particular challenges to growing potatoes do you face in your zone? And how do you overcome those challenges?
Spring is often too wet to plant early, then a drought later on is fairly common. I prepare as much as I can in the fall for all my spring planting because my window of opportunity to get all my cool weather stuff in the ground is pretty limited because of the wet. I have to take advantage of any short dry spell. If there is a drought, I irrigate.

14. Do you have any specific information that might help others successfully grow potatoes in your particular zone?

I can only get good seed potatoes early in the season so they are susceptible to frost. I cover them whenever a frost is predicted, using sheets I got real cheap at a thrift store.

Seed potatoes are normally treated with some really nasty chemicals to get them to break dormancy. Do not eat seed potatoes.

A green potato (caused by exposure to sunlight) contains solanine, a poison. The green comes from photosynthesis and is not the problem, but it is an indication that solanine has also been produced. You’d have to eat quite a bit of the green potato for it to have an effect on a healthy person, but I try to avoid poison even in small dosages that are not supposed to harm me. This is also the basis of the myth that you should not feed potato peelings to chickens. Potato peelings are fine for chickens if they will eat them, but you should not feed green potato peelings to chickens.

Monty, you might want to do some research on Physiological Age in seed potatoes. I couldn’t find the article I was looking for that I think explains it in pretty good detail. Basically, if the seed potatoes have not broken dormancy, they won’t sprout. If they are too young physiologically, you get very few sprouts (just at the ends) and a pretty poor harvest. If they are too old you get stunted growth and a poor harvest. Really old ones just make little tiny potatoes on the roots. This article gives more detail than most I found but it’s not the good one.

http://www.gnb.ca/0029/00290002-e.asp


15 What type of soil? Clay, amended with compost. Well composted compost, no fresh manure.

 

[MontyJ]

Great job Ridge! That's exactly what we're looking for. I had already planned on covering the Solanine issue, but the physiological age thing is completely new to me. I'll get busy on some research about it.

 

[thistlebloom]

1. What is your zone?
I'm zone 5 according to the USDA, but hover closer to zone 4 sometimes.

2. What varieties of potatoes do you plant?
I plant a lot of different varieties every year, because there are so many wonderful kinds. I'm searching for my new favorites.
This year I planted:
Bintje
Bliss Triumph
Caribe
Carola
Huckleberry
Magic molly
Maris Piper
And harvested all of the above,( approximately 500 pounds ) plus about 25 pounds of volunteer Purple Viking and Rose Finn fingerlings from last years crop.

3. Where do you get your seed potatoes?
I buy most of mine from The Potato Garden, and sometimes may pick some up from a local nursery.

4. What insect or disease pressures have you faced?
Really, I haven't had any of either so far, knock on my head.
I had a bit of scab on a very few, but nothing alarming.

5. How do you combat those insect or disease pressures?
N/A

6. When do you plant your potatoes?
Usually around the first of May, our last frost date is around May 15. Sometimes I get them in the last week of April. It depends on how daring I feel.

7. How deep do you plant them?
I make about a 4 -6 inch furrow, and cover them with 4 inches of soil.

8. Do you cut your seed potatoes?
Only if they are real big, bigger than a tennis ball for instance.

9. Do you treat the cut pieces? If so, what do you threat them with?
I don't treat them. I don't have a problem with excess soil moisture.

10. Do you hill your potatoes? If not, do you notice any crop loss?
I do hill, but not extensively since my soil doesn't have great depth. I hill once, maybe twice, if I can pull enough soil from the walkways. Then I cover the soil with straw pretty deep, without covering the potato leaves.


11. When do you harvest your potatoes?
When the vines yellow and die, or when they get frost killed.

12. How or where do you store your harvested potatoes?

I keep my potatoes in an uninsulated garage. I can fit close to 300 pounds in a tool type storage box that I have insulated. They keep well in there. This year I had way more than would fit so i bought some 40 gallon (or whatever that size is, I know it's more than 32) trash cans, lined them with cardboard and bubble wrap and stored the potatoes in paper grocery bags (according to size and variety) inside those. I don't yet know how well they'll keep in there. Our garage gets very cold, water jugs freeze solid, but I'm hopeful that my spuds will be okay!

13. What particular challenges to growing potatoes do you face in your zone? And how do you overcome those challenges?

Hey, this is Idaho!

14. Do you have any specific information that might help others successfully grow potatoes in your particular zone?

Actually I feel like potatoes are an easy crop. The main thing is to make sure the tubers stay covered, and keep the soil at a consistent moisture level. Don't let them dry completely and then flood them. That makes for hollow heart problems.
I would like to add that I think *chitting them makes a huge difference in production. I like to chit mine for about 2 weeks prior to planting. I have seen a difference in the years when I haven't allowed them to sprout first.
I chit mine in shallow cardboard boxes in a bright room, in my case it's the living room, but I don't let them be in direct sun. They make those nice fat stubby green sprouts that way.

*The term chit, or chitting is just an extremely technical, eggheaded synonym for sprouting. Living here in rural Idaho with my fellow highly technical, eggheaded compatriots, I felt compelled to use it. And to use it as many times as possible as I see I did in my explanation (see above) Plus it just rolls off the tongue more elegantly than "sprout".

15. What type of soil?

My soil is rocky loam. Really, really, rocky loam. A lot of my garden areas are new and I'm working on these by amending with composted manures and leaves. And picking out the biggest rocks. Orange size and bigger. I figure I'll continue to pick rocks and eventually get down to smaller and smaller ones sometime before the next century arrives.

 

[MontyJ]

Awesome Thistle! Thanks so much! How can we go wrong with information from Idaho??? Ridge hit me with physiological age, and now I hear another term I'm not familiar with. Could you explain chitting potatoes in a little more detail? I mean, I chit potatoes pretty regularly but somehow I don't think we are talking about the same thing

 

[thistlebloom]

Yes... it's possible that your slurring it a bit Monty.
I added to my response in post #4. If you need a plainer explanation I'll try again.

 

[MontyJ]

So, when you chit your potatoes, do you do anything to them? Is the process basically, place them in a single layer in a shallow cardboard box in a sunny location? Do you mist them? Set them in soil? Just bare and dry? Is it even a single layer? Are they covered with anything?

 

[digitS']

Great idea, MontyJ!

1. What is your zone?
Border of 5/6

2. What varieties of potatoes do you plant?
In 2014, the plan is at least 1 or the follow along with a Russet: Caribe, Sangre, Red Norland

3. Where do you get your seed potatoes?
garden center. Do not use supermarket potatoes for seed. Organic may be okay but potatoes you find at the supermarket in late winter have likely been treated to retard sprouting. That treatment begins while the plants were still growing in the field. A conventionally grown potato plant may have been sprayed with insecticide, sprayed with a sprout retardant, sprayed with a chemical to kill the vines - all before the potatoes are harvested. After the harvest, the potatoes may be sprayed/gassed in storage to retard sprouting.

4. What insect or disease pressures have you faced?
scab
nematodes

5. How do you combat those insect or disease pressures?
Avoid varieties prone to insect and disease.
Potato beetles are problems in gardens where I do NOT grow potatoes. I spray them in the eggplants, especially, with Spinosad.

6. When do you plant your potatoes?
Along with the earliest sowings of things like spinach and onion sets - about the 1st of April.

7. How deep do you plant them?
If the bed has already been prepared with compost the year before, using a post hole digger to about 5". Otherwise, I will dig out a bed to about 6", till and compost and lay out the seed potatoes in this trench before recovering with the soil.

8. Do you cut your seed potatoes?
Yes, leaving at least 2 or more eyes. Chitting is a good idea before cutting.

9. Do you treat the cut pieces? If so, what do you threat them with?
No. They are planted the same day.

10. Do you hill your potatoes? If not, do you notice any crop loss?
Yes. I use semi-decomposed compost and apply it after fertilizing and when the plants are about 10" tall.

11. When do you harvest your potatoes?
As the plants yellow and begin to die back. Early varieties, starting about the 1st of August and continuing through the month.

12. How or where do you store your harvested potatoes?
In a cardboard box in the basement. As the garage temperature cools more quickly than the basement, I may carry them upstairs and out to the garage and then carry them back down to the basement when freezing in the garage becomes a danger. Right now, at mid-December, the temperature in that basement room is 48°f. Earlier, it was warmer and a little too warm. All of my potatoes have already been used.

13. What particular challenges to growing potatoes do you face in your zone? And how do you overcome those challenges?
I delight in early potatoes but harvesting in August while the weather is so warm means they will not keep long.

14. Do you have any specific information that might help others successfully grow potatoes in your particular zone?
Limit early varieties to what you can use during the fall months unless you have excellent storage conditions. Plant early and harvest them early. Use that bed to grow a greens crop like bok choy for the fall. Plant late-maturing potato varieties where they can remain in the ground until the first frost.

Steve

 

[journey11]

Neat idea, Monty!

1. What is your zone?
6b

2. What varieties of potatoes do you plant?
Kennebec and Red Pontiac

3. Where do you get your seed potatoes?
At my local feed n' seed

4. What insect or disease pressures have you faced?
Scab and Colorado potato beetles

5. How do you combat those insect or disease pressures?
Rotate planting site for disease, hand-pick and drown bugs in soapy water.

6. When do you plant your potatoes?
As soon as I can after St. Patrick's day up til about the end of June at latest.

7. How deep do you plant them?
I make a deep furrow with the tiller attachment, drop them every 1 foot and cover with about an inch of soil.

8. Do you cut your seed potatoes?
Yes. I also like to chit mine ahead of time.

9. Do you treat the cut pieces? If so, what do you threat them with?
No, but I probably should. I let them lay in the shade and dry a bit for most of the day prior to planting though.

10. Do you hill your potatoes? If not, do you notice any crop loss?
Yes, about 2 or 3 times.

11. When do you harvest your potatoes?
Once the flowers are gone and the vines start to die back.

12. How or where do you store your harvested potatoes?
In a large wooden crate in my basement. I can the small or damaged potatoes and may can any that start sprouting in the winter too.

13. What particular challenges to growing potatoes do you face in your zone? And how do you overcome those challenges?
Heavy red clay soil, not much topsoil. It takes a lot of amending to soften the soil...compost, manure, etc.

14. Do you have any specific information that might help others successfully grow potatoes in your particular zone?
Make sure your garden spot drains well. They don't like wet feet and it increases risk of diseases. Fertilize and check soil pH. Needs to be a little more acidic for potatoes, like about 5 to 5.5. Don't hill with straw; you'll just be making homes for voles that will eat a chunk out of every potato you've got.

 

[MontyJ]

"7. How deep do you plant them?
If the bed has already been prepared with compost the year before, using a post hole digger to about 5". Otherwise, I will dig out a bed to about 6", till and compost and lay out the seed potatoes in this trench before recovering with the soil."---digitS'

Wow Steve! You plant 5-6 inches deep? Obviously it works for you. Does that planting depth reduce the amount of hilling you have to do, and how long does it take for the sprouts to break the surface? What type of soil would you say you have? Also, have you considered the use of compost as a contributing factor to the scab?

I added another question to the list which was brought up by the depth of Steve's planting. Soil type. How could I have forgotten that??