Quote:
|
Tom. Those photos show a lot of vegetation, which is healthy,BUT does not address the issue of new tubers growing along the main stems like tomatoes
|
Durgan,
I understand the frustration of not seeing a potato vine growing in soil as view in an ant farm with the glass making every nook and twist shown. Most potato varieties are ill suited for trying to get tubers along the entire nodal vine like a tomato. The best I can explain for a potato variety that can are not commonly available. I sell TPS and not tuber varieties of late but imagine each of those nodes sending out both stolons that produce tubers and stolons that produce a new vine far from the mother plant....and those new vines repeating the process so that with additional dirt heaped on as the plant grows....one could easily fill the entire soil tower with underground branching and tuber set with dozens of periodicly emerging potato plants.
Without a good photo I thought maybe a good draw a potato variety that is capable of growing lots ot potatoes all along the nodal points. I am showing three time elapsed shots....first filling in of the soil media and two successive hilling up thence. Bearing in mind that nearly all commercial potatoes will not do this...they simply concentrate the production of tubers at the base of the tower as your photo shows on your blog. The kinds of potatoes that will perform well in a tower are those that in a conventional row will produce potato tubers two feet or more in each direction. It takes a combination of brachytic growth of new stolons that produce both new vines and new tubers.
Sorry for not taking the time to draw a perfect illustration but I am trying to get to the field to plant 135 varieties of potatoes from all over the world.
