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[sqft] Potato Farming

Square Foot Gardening List - http://www.flinet.com/~gallus/sqft.html

The graphic previously attached to this msg was deleted in the interest of
reducing download time.

Suggestions from the Organic Gardening Discussion List were that things were
pretty much normal and that possibly, the extraordinary growth was due to
very rich soil.

Hope this helps.

***********************************

In the Feb. '96 issue of Organic Gardening Mel B. suggests a method of
growing potatoes, i.e. digging a foot down and "hilling" in the hole as the
plant grows in order to produce a long stem and a high yield.

I tried that this year and was somewhat too successful! (See attached
graphic.)

I planted remnants from last year's Yukon Gold crop in the following
pattern:

  O O O O
  O O O O
  O O O O
  X  X  X  X,

where the X's are potatoes and the O's are something else, in this case a
mix of salad vegetables.

As you can see from the graphic, the vines got *enormous*, so much so that I
put in welded wire fencing to get the growth headed upward instead of all
over everything else in the bed and in neighboring beds.

The size of the vines surprised me, since here in the Skagit Valley
(Northwest Washington State) commercially-grown potatoes (and there are a
*lot* of them!) display a much more compact growth habit. They are, I
believe, Red Nakotas (sp?) and Cascade Whites. Previously, I let the vines
sprawl on the ground, and their height (if directed upward) wasn't
immediately apparent.

In desperation, I cut the vines at ground level on 7 Aug. although the
plants still had plenty of growing to do. By that date almost all of the
commercial fields had either been harvested or vine-killed.

I harvested on 21 Aug. The yield wasn't much greater than I had experienced
before, however, a much greater percentage of tubers were good-sized with
not many "marbles" at all. As usual, among eight plants, there were two
tubers which were gooey. I think this may be bacterial soft rot, but I'm not
sure.

I may have self-inflicted this problem by planting the entire potato instead
of cutting out an eye, treating the cut edges and planting that. Next year I
plan to experiment by doing that, and perhaps by devoting one entire bed to
potatoes in the following pattern, using welded wire fencing again if
required:

  X O X O
  O X O X
  X O X O
  O X O X

Any comments or suggestions?

Syd,
Anacortes, WA


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