Growing potatoes

[BarredBuff]

Um, no , youngin. jump in here and contribute.

No Im watching. We havent had too much luck with potatoes Im here to get learned

Here is our setup for next year, please tell me what you think.

We tilled the ground for the potatoes in the fall and still need to finish a good section of it. But its tilled over twice, with lots of rotted hay, ashes, and a little lime. Underneath black plastic. A method she said she tried with sucess years ago. Any thoughts?

 

[FarmerJamie]

Um, no , youngin. jump in here and contribute.

No Im watching. We havent had too much luck with potatoes Im here to get learned

Here is our setup for next year, please tell me what you think.

We tilled the ground for the potatoes in the fall and still need to finish a good section of it. But its tilled over twice, with lots of rotted hay, ashes, and a little lime. Underneath black plastic. A method she said she tried with sucess years ago. Any thoughts?

/* Pa 'tater rant */
First of all, no one should be ashamed of trying something and not feeling successful. No one here knows it all - they know what works for them. Feel free to talk about the failures, we may learn something, too. What did you try before?
Second, with gardening there are so many variables. I did my garden the same basic way I've always done. This year was crap because of the record rainfall. I tried a few new things that didn't work, but I don't know if I did it wrong or if the rain did it (I'm guessing the rain).
Third of all, we learn from our mistakes and evolve. We don't watch someone's video to learn how to ride a bike and then go out and do it right the first time. Some learn to ride with training wheels, some with mom/dad holding the bike from behind the seat, some by just jumping on the bike and trying until they get it right. /* Pa 'tater rant over*/

Help me understand your setup. The plastic is a cover over the tilled soil. How are the potatoes planted? Holes in the plastic? Rows cut in the plastic?
It seems like that setup would be good at retaining moisture. My clay soil would turn that into a sopping wet sponge in a day after just one heavy rain. How is your soil type/drainage?

 

[BarredBuff]

Holes in the plastic, and that helps with watering where it retains moisture Soil is a looser clay type....

 

[CheerioLounge]

Very Inspirational! Thanks Pa 'tater!

 

[FarmerJamie]

Holes in the plastic, and that helps with watering where it retains moisture Soil is a looser clay type....

I'm thinking I might like this setup.

What would I have questions about? Hmmm,...
- how the soil would be prevented from "claying up", either by drying up or being walked on. Keeping it moist would solve the first part, but might be an issue if it's walked on much.
- any concerns about varmits setting up shop under the plastic
- harvesting and weeding should be a breeze.
- gauge of plastic being used (assuming black? plastic)
- how deep is the "worked" soil?

now you have me interested. Every year after hilling my rows, the stupid chickens scratch and peck their way through the fresh dirt.

 

[BrandedX]

I'm gearing up to try my hand at raisin' some 'tater's this year.

My plan, as of now, is to try 3 different varieties in 15 gallon plastic trash bins using the SFG soil mixture (layering up the soil level as the plant grows). I'm opting for this sort of setup in hopes that I can use some sturdy S-hooks to hang the bins along the chain-link fence-line of my garden area to make more space for raised beds.

I'm curious to know if anyone has any advice or experience with this sort of method and if it's likely that it may provide a little extra protection against a blight this way. Also, would it it be likely that would have to make any watering modification since the bottom of the containers will not in contact with the ground (conductive insulator) and more airflow (convective loss during non-direct sun/heat sink during direct sunlight). Because the area is prone to shady times throughout first part of the day, I'm hoping that using a white plastic will help with sort of reflecting the ambient light and then a little shade for the more intense heat of the mid afternoon.

 

[BarredBuff]

What would I have questions about? Hmmm,...
- how the soil would be prevented from "claying up", either by drying up or being walked on. Keeping it moist would solve the first part, but might be an issue if it's walked on much. We dont plan to be on it alot.
- any concerns about varmits setting up shop under the plastic Im not really because we have 9 cats over in that vicinity so we should be good
- harvesting and weeding should be a breeze.
- gauge of plastic being used (assuming black? plastic) Black plastic row cover.
- how deep is the "worked" soil? Not entirely sure, just tilled over twice plus all of the hay and stuff on it.

 

[Marianne]

I'm gearing up to try my hand at raisin' some 'tater's this year.

My plan, as of now, is to try 3 different varieties in 15 gallon plastic trash bins using the SFG soil mixture (layering up the soil level as the plant grows). I'm opting for this sort of setup in hopes that I can use some sturdy S-hooks to hang the bins along the chain-link fence-line of my garden area to make more space for raised beds.

I'm curious to know if anyone has any advice or experience with this sort of method and if it's likely that it may provide a little extra protection against a blight this way. Also, would it it be likely that would have to make any watering modification since the bottom of the containers will not in contact with the ground (conductive insulator) and more airflow (convective loss during non-direct sun/heat sink during direct sunlight). Because the area is prone to shady times throughout first part of the day, I'm hoping that using a white plastic will help with sort of reflecting the ambient light and then a little shade for the more intense heat of the mid afternoon.

First of all - Welcome!

My thoughts:
Those 15 gallon tubs are going to be really heavy by the time you get all your soil in there plus some water, too. What's SFG soil mixture?
I always have to water any hanging plant more often than anything planted directly in the soil. No area to leave the tubs sitting directly on top of the ground? You could put the tubs anywhere then, maybe in an area that gets more sun.
On using the plastic, I have nothing. I don't use it here or my spuds would be baked. Do you mean that you would suspend the plastic over the plants? Would that create a greenhouse type effect, too? Just askin'...

 

[moolie]

Never had blight, touch wood! Well, except for some pot grown tomato plants on the balcony of our first apartment in Vancouver BC where blight is rampant. But we didn't have a garden back then (nor did we have any home grown tomatoes that year ).

Growing up my Mom planted a huge traditional row garden and us kids always had to find the potatoes in the loosened soil as she and my Dad forked them up--never had any blight in my memory, this was in BC's Similkameen Valley in the 70s. Those were good keeper potatoes too, wonder what variety they were--Mom can't remember a lot of the details anymore.

We've since grown potatoes using the "barrel" method (same as stacking tires) by planting them in compost in the bottom of a tubular hoop of chicken wire, then adding layers of compost as the potatoes grew up--we get a nice yield that way and find that we don't have to water much because compost holds moisture so well.

Again, no blight in 13 years, touch wood (although we've not planted potatoes each year that we've gardened--took the last 3 years off and started up again this past summer).

But we don't ever compost potato plants or peels at home because we don't want to introduce anything that would harm our potatoes or tomatoes, and our potato growing compost gets spread on the front lawn in the spring as the snow is melting to help fertilize the lawn, so it never goes into the regular garden. As I recall, blight on plant remains is killed by freezing?

 

[Joel_BC]

Never had blight, touch wood! Well, except for some pot grown tomato plants on the balcony of our first apartment in Vancouver BC where blight is rampant. But we didn't have a garden back then (nor did we have any home grown tomatoes that year ).

Hi moolie. Glad to hear you've had no blight problems!

Actaully, the potato-blight discussion is going on over at:
http://www.sufficientself.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=11741

I split the thread, because some people wanted to just discuss potato cultivation in general, so that thread (which I started first-off) was getting a bit hijacked.

So here we're just discussing cultivation in different kinds of soil, using certain techniques, fetilization, etc.