Growing potatoes, know pretty much nuthin'!!

, putting this out there....smiling that big smile.

OK, so I am seeking advice from all you potato farmers, smiling. Pretend I know nothing, well, I don't know much about growing potatoes, but have grown a few over the years. They always seemed so daunting to me, cause, well, I am uninformed I guess. I have dabbled in growing a few over the years, not much success. Last year I grew caribe (think that is what they are called, early, purply skin with white inside) and kennebec (red with white inside). I like the white flesh potato.

Last year was the first time a garden had been cultivated here. So I was dealing with clay soil basically, bad stuff. But worked so hard with amending the soil with compost, chicken and horse manures, more compost, lots and lots of peat moss, I mean lots. And by the time it was planting time, had some very beautiful and loamy type soil. I am sure that I will be almost back to where I started with the working of the soil, but got more compost this year than I did last year, smiling. Lots of it.

With the cool summer, but lots of warmth, made sense, right? Let me explain. This area is pretty much a dry area, from what I gather (north Okanagan, 1.5 hours north of Kelowna, 1.5 hours east of Kamloops, 1.5 hours west of Golden (or so) ). We live in a valley, close to the Shuswap River, so lots and lots of water below ground. Two wells, so lots of water....alfalfa fields on the east, barley fields on the west. We are on a three acre parcel in the middle of the two, and as I said, in a valley, with full sun all day long. Ok, that scene set.

Last summer was a weird one, like so many of us have experienced. It got hot, but there was intermittent rains and some cool weather, so the gardens were watered pretty much by Mother Nature. I only watered a couple of times, more so to the end of the summer, when summer actually began, at the beginning of August. Then it got pretty dry and hot, but not over bearing.

The gardens grew here like nothing I have ever experienced in my lifetime of gardening. Back in our old life on the southwest coast of B.C. it is rainforest conditions. Lots of dew, lots of rain, and lots of warmth. Perfect gardening areas. I have always had very beautiful and great gardens, be that flowers or vegetables. The harvest of the vegetable garden was like something from an alien plant. Everything grew to monstrous sizes and so did my larder. Pickles, everything you could imagine. Drat....this was about potato growing.

The potatoes grew well too. For the first time really getting into growing them, I think the harvest was decent. But only decent I would say. I think I need to learn how to better grow potatoes.

I have read informational links about how to grow them. I was shocked at what some people do to grow potatoes, the stuff that they put into the soil to make them grow I think was the most interesting. So many amendments to make them grow. I don't want deep and technical stuff, about how many nutrients should be combined to make the best potatoes. I am not a chemist and just want some simple information on how to grow these.

I think the most important thing for me to understand is, things like, what is "chitting", read about that. When you plant the potatoes, do you dig a deep hole/trench, then fill in? How long do you keep filling in the plants that are growing, when do you stop covering the green growth, how much do you cover the green growth, how is that done. When can you expect to get a few nice little potatoes for those early beauties. By the time I dug up some potatoes last year they were the size of grapefruit, shock!!! There wasn't any small ones. I think I waited to long to get some, cause I didn't know when to get some out. I also ran out of soil to cover them up with, what else can be used to cover them?

I have about 30 big bags of leaves from the maple trees in the yards here. They are in a pile near the compost pile. I am wondering what to do with those bags of leaves, there is a whole lotta leaves there. I will be incorporating them into my composty piles of course, but can maple leaves be used to hill instead of dirt? See, I am pretty much a dummy when it comes to growing potatoes, so help me out here, pleeeeeeze. Elaborate and speak as much as you want, I am listening. Beautiful days, CynthiaM.

I never heard of chitting before, just got good seed potatoes and made sure it had lots of eyes. Dig holes about 10 inches or so deep and cover them up, as they grow hill them, pull the dirt up around the plant keeps the sun off the potatoes, they do like an acidic soil, I used to put coffee grounds in the rows, plant horse radish in the corners of the plot to keep out potato bugs, or pick them off the plants, if you want baby taters, just feel under the plant with your hands without pulling it up and sneak some out , in the fall when the vines are dried up and brown dig them out for winter storage, easy

Hmm... this will be interesting CynthiaM

Potatoes are the one thing that do grow well up here!
My technique is cut potatoes with a few eyes on each piece. Dig a small pit. Plant piece in ground. Fill slowly as plant grows. Stop filling when I forget to. Water when I remember to. Harvest little potatoes as time goes on by running hand carefully under plant in the soil. (I love the little potatoes!) Dig up before the hard frosts start and enjoy potatoes from the cool back room until last week when they ran out and I had to buy some!

Not much help I don't think. Sorry.

Good, responses are coming. Deb, horseradish, what does that do to prevent the potato beetle? Very curious. I have never really found the foliage of the horseradish to be aromatic, the pretty white flowers are to die for though with the awesome fragrance -- (reminds me a bit of the flower of the garlic chives, so pretty, so pure white, so fragrant) but then maybe I am not a potato beetle and can't smell the leaves, smiling. Well, hope I am not a beetle anyways. I have a horseradish plant that I brought from the coast when we moved. I dug up some of it last fall and it is already taking off like a mad demon. Little roots going everywhere, eeeks.....got enough nice ones to make some nice radish. I bet this year even bigger, smiling again. I need to contain that sucker pretty quickly otherwise it is gonna be everywhere!! I don't think I will take any roots and make new plants, I'll find something else to deter the Colorado potato beetle. Perhaps lots of basil planted around the potato area, that is stinky stuff!! But oh smells so nice, especially if it brushes one's leg as you walk by, love it!!! (and bees love the flowers too, so I let them go to flower too). Oh basil leaves with fresh garden tomatoes on a sandwich. Oh summer, oh summer, come our way!! Thanks for the tips, I am listening, bring it!! Have a wonderful day, CynthiaM.

Firstly, I would look for a variety that might do well in a dry zone. For example Red La Soda is supposed to be drought resistant. When they domesticated the potato, the Incas had varieties that would do well in different areas and they planted them accordingly. (Incidentally, Kennebec isn't red skinned, perhaps you had Red Pontiac or Chieftain)

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Purchase seed from reliable sources. A farm selling seed would be in the disease free seed program and their plants would have been inspected to certify that seed. If people don't know what to pick out, their plants can become full of various viruses (I found this out when I tried a variety through Seeds of Diversity, they were riddled with virus and I threw them all out).

Potatoes can be cut and planted. Leave a few eyes on each piece of seed. Preferably use large potatoes and cut them for seed. Lots of potato viruses are fairly benign but lower yield, so the small potatoes (unless they come from an inspected source) should be avoided as they could be small because the plant was infected.

Potatoes are related to tomatoes. The stems will produce roots as far up as you want to cover them. You can find descriptions on line about people getting 50 lbs from one plant. They grow them in a large container and keep covering them so there are massive roots to produce the spuds.

Around here we grow them in hills or hilled up rows but then we get a fair amount of rain. I have heard that some places out west need to grow in trenches to help keep moisture in so I'll leave that to someone who knows more about growing under those conditions.

Potatoes prefer soil that is a bit acidic. Make it too neutral using compost or wood ash, and you will get more scab. You can still eat them of course.

Potato bugs, for small areas picking them by hand is probably the easiest. Turkeys can work on them and I've heard that ducks will too. I don't know about chickens but they might.

Potatoes varieties mature at different times so your new potatoes would vary. You can eat them whenever they are big enough that you want to go to the trouble. For me, anything smaller than a loonie would be left. New potatoes are just potatoes where the skin hasn't set yet. You can start checking in mid July. Maybe even early July for an early variety.

If you are nervous of harvesting before frost, you can cut the tops off to hurry along the plant dieing back. Once the plant dies, the skins on the potatoes is set and you can harvest.

That's all for now.

THe last Small Farm Canada had quite an extensive article about potatoes and places to order seed. THey also spoke about chitting which sounded to me like setting your potatoes on a windowsill and letting those little eyes get big. Apparently this cuts down on growing time, but they must be planted with care to not break off the growth.

If you can Google the last issue Cynthia, it might well be worth a read. They reviewed some interesting sounding types of potatoes I've never heard of before! But now is the time to order and get them in the windowsill...no chit.

uno wrote:THe last Small Farm Canada had quite an extensive article about potatoes and places to order seed. THey also spoke about chitting which sounded to me like setting your potatoes on a windowsill and letting those little eyes get big. Apparently this cuts down on growing time, but they must be planted with care to not break off the growth.

If you can Google the last issue Cynthia, it might well be worth a read. They reviewed some interesting sounding types of potatoes I've never heard of before! But now is the time to order and get them in the windowsill...no chit.

Ah, I hadn't heard of the word "chitting". But yes, even just tear the bag open and let the light at them for a week and they will start to work on their sprouts.

The chickens we had growing up would NOT eat pototoe bugs. We would pick them by the soup can full, pour boiling water over them, then glush them down the toilet.

I am going to try and plant some potatoes in straw this year. I think i will try both methods. The first is to lay the potato on the ground and cover with 8" of straw. The second method is to soak the bale for a couple weeks then put the potato right inside the bale.

As for chitting, I have read different lengths of time, some say to do it a few weeks and another site said 6 weeks so i just don`t know.

I think 'chitty" would be great if you had a very short growing period.
I buy new seed each year, hubby goes ahead of me with a spade, sinks it in, pushes the spade back, I pop in a seed potatoe and in minutes we can have about five rows planted. I think it's about 15 hills per row. Hubby has a way of measuring with his foot steps how far apart, and then he can work between the rows with the rototiller. He also hills them. We quite often are eating the new potatoes around the first or second week of July.

To plant them i usually just step them into freshly tilled soil. To do this you must have tilled the ground nice and deep. I them get one of my kids to gently drag a rake over the row to cover the footprints. I plant 5-7 rows of potatoes with approx 75-100 hills per row. If you ground is soft enough you will not need to hill them later. Too much manure in your garden will cause scab. There is nothing wrong with the potatoe they just look horrible. The other thing we have done is plant our potatoes around our compost pile, the one that is not being used that year. Also we have found you need to rotate where your potatoes are planted in your garden.

Be careful not to put too much nitrogen rich compost in your garden plot for planting potatoes as too much nitrogen will give you more top and less 'bottoming up'. We had this experience one year where we used manure that was too fresh and that brought the nitrogen levels too high. We had the huge green tops but very few and very small pototoes. Make sure that the compost you use is well "composted".