Potato planting kick-off

[wmontanez]

This weekend I planted potato tubers in the ground. I made fit 18 different tubers from Tom Wagner's one pound sampler plus my 16 tubers saved from last year's sampler. I took a raised bed that is 42in wide by 12ft long and used about 7ft for potatoes. The spacing was 6-12 inches depending if I wanted to have big tubers or smaller tubers. I planted this bed with one tuber per variety to have them cross pollinate each other and get more OP TPS.

The extra tubers went into a bed for early potatoes to eat.

I haven't yet planted TPS outdoors, 3 weeks to frost free day.

[Tom Wagner]

I had a rare day yesterday that did not rain on me....in fact I had more sun than I should have had for my first full day in the sun...almost tanned from one day. Of course, it rained today.

I looked at the weather reports...diligently because we had late frosts just recently....and planted 120 varieties of potatoes. This included my sprout pulls of Azul Toro which were potted up about 10 days ago. I also put out about 24 sets of Azul Toro that were greenhouse starts from tubers in pots that were about 4-5 inches tall. The latter ones could have been part of my continuing sprout pulls but I wanted to test a dense clump effect where the cluster of stems is 15 to 20 stems. With the temps getting warmer, these established plants should commence tuberization in a week or two. I will lift these clusters as early as possible in order to replant in July for a late fall harvest. I expect to get 50 tubers or more per hill with these multi-stem cluster hills. Let's see...
50 x 24 = 1200

The reason I will get such high number is that the tuber aged at high temps since harvest and was sprouted out with many leaders...each of which is on its own root system. Each stem has emerged and will easily produce those 3 or more tiny tubers per stem,,,,maybe more. I only need the tubers to reach an average of 1/3 oz. for replanting.

I expect the day and night temps to be around 59/45 for the next few weeks....all of which will not cause rapid top growth but the benign stress will force tuber bulking at the expense of slow top growth. The plants may attempt to bloom, but the cold temps will abort the berry set. The crowding of the stems will trigger a defensive tuberize or die syndrome. The fertilizer was placed at or below the root level and with the rain today...it won't be long before the roots take note of the organic feed and minerals. The well fed leaves will have ample energy to transfer the nutrients to the small tubers very quickly. Since the tubers were put into the greenhouse over a month ago...the physiological age of the plants are already 30 to 40 days old and will need only the month of May to reach maturity. The 15 or more stems/plants in the cluster will quickly use up most of the abundance of fertilizer in three to four weeks causing the vines to reach senescence than if it was only one or three stems.

The single stem sprout pulls of the same variety will grow longer and taller and will bloom more abundantly. The tubers will reach the largest potential for the variety.

I will be starting my TPS transplants to the field in another week. I will have thousands and thousands of those to do. But in order to facilitate high blooming and berry set on those.....I will have to have irrigation available to get those to set during the dry months of July and August. I get better berry set if I don't put the seedlings out too early. Way too often even here in June the highs for the day maybe will only be 59 F. Berry set is best during day temps of upper 60's but not much over 80. Temps of over 88 are hazardous for berry set. Lows at nights are crucial for berry set.....too many nights in the upper 40's hurt berry set.

What are the ideal temps? If I had my druthers...... 75 days and 55/60 nights. Since I don't get those options, I must have extremely good berry setters in spite of the more extremes that we all get.

Tom Wagner

[David Marek]

By the sounds of it, I'm glad to have a variety of varieties, and I'll just observe the plants doing whatever they want to do- making berries would be a nice bonus.

Anyway, all tubers are in (3 locations- special thanks to a friend and a neighbor with sunny yards and fewer rodents), and one more tray of rooted cuttings will be planted in about a week.

I hope the first batch of cuttings doesn't get confused- they had to shiver through some nights in the low 30s. It will be interesting to see the differences between the stock tubers and the 1st, 2nd and 3rd batch of cuttings since they are all the "same" age.

[TZ-OH6]

I too planted 16-18 varieties, second gens from last year's sample pack. I was able to expand my garden plot of good potato soil and get in about 100 row feet, but I still had three varieties that had to go into my gooey clay tomato bed. I'm not sure where the TPS plants will go since I am out of room. Maybe some onions will have to be sacrificed.

[Tom Wagner]

TZ,

I looked up the list of potatoes that you received last year and I hope they do well for you this year. You have clay soil? Organic matter to the rescue.

I would definitely add organic matter....compost...peat moss..etc to the row as you drag it out. Mix it in a bit and then transplant those TPS seedlings. Any amount to make the soil friable and not gummy. You may have read what I put into the soil on the spacing thread topic.

Meanwhile, it doesn't hurt to read what you local area says to do with clay soil....

http://local.garden.org/Improving_Cl...Vernon_OH.html

http://local.garden.org/Testing_Soil...Vernon_OH.html

[TZ-OH6]

Thanks for the links!

Only one of my three main garden plots are bad clay, one is sandyish, and one is nice loam. There is a website (see link) with soil types super imposed on satelite images, which shows our property with a line separating two soil types cutting right through this one 30ftx20ft plot. One corner is sand and the rest is clay. How did they get that accurate without tromping over the area?


The clay plot in question has got plenty of organic matter, but mixing is a problem. The area was clay subsoil (i.e. plasticine-like clay mixed with sandstone shards). It was stripped of topsoil during house construction. I dug down 2 ft to the loam and sandy loam sub-subsoil layers and mixed in forest litter as I back filled and then mixed in 8-10 inches of half composted wood chips and leaves into the top layer over the next two years. Two winters ago a heavy cover crop of winter rye was grown on it. The problem is that I don't have a tiller so the soil is a matrix of potting soil-like organic material and gummy blobs. The potatoes will grow well there and dig up easily enough, but it will be a hastle to get the sticky clay off of the tubers


Luckily the nice light topsoil from the property was bulldozed to an adjacent area (which is now the main potato patch).


Here is the site that can get you a satelite picture of your property with soil type.

http://websoilsurvey.nrcs.usda.gov/app/HomePage.htm

[Farmette]

I'm still working on getting my potatoes left over from last year to sprout. I have them covered in light media that is slightly damp. Any suggestions? It has been about a week, maybe I am too late. On the other hand my TPS that germinated is doing well.
Chris

[Jeannine Anne]

I now have a long waist high raised bed ready to plant potatoes in as our ground is far too waterlogged to use.

The bed is 3 feet wide by 24 feet.

It may be the only place I can use this year.

My question.. If I plant my assorted varieties in it, do you have any advice on how I will know which is which when they are dug up..I have for the most part just one tuber of about 18 or so varieties.

Is there an advantage to having them all together like this.

In the past if saving tubers for the foillowing year I was always very careful to only plant one variety per row or bed.

XX Jeannine

[owiebrain]

I think I'm going to start planting out potatoes today, the biggest of both the TPS and pulled sprouts. The forecast looks good but, since it's just a few, it won't be much skin off my nose on the off chance a stray bit of winter run through again.

How large are the TPS and pulled sprouts you all set out?

Originally Posted by TZ-OH6

Here is the site that can get you a satelite picture of your property with soil type.

http://websoilsurvey.nrcs.usda.gov/app/HomePage.htm

Thanks for that link! Very cool stuff.

[salix]

Jeannine - I am in the same situation with some of my potatoes (!!TYVM!!) so am planning to treat them like tomatoes - ie labelling each one with a sturdy sun-resistant marker. It will be a bit of a pain, especially while hilling etc., but one must do what one must do... They are definitely going to get individual attention, lol. They probably won't go into the ground for a couple of weeks, they are sleeping/sprouting soundly in their little pots in the meanwhile.

An old timer potato farmer hereabouts claims that it is better to delay planting until the soil warms up, even well into June if necessary, than to plant in cold soil earlier which will just delay growth. What say all of you, any thoughts?

[Tom Wagner]

It is amazing how accurate the soil maps get drawn. One of my cooperators has a one acre plot that has two publicized soil types...one from one river and one from yet another river with a silty clay left laid down. The Sultan clay can be seen as a slightly lower drop-off as one scans the adjoining fields.

I'm still working on getting my potatoes left over from last year to sprout. I have them covered in light media that is slightly damp. Any suggestions? It has been about a week, maybe I am too late

The tubers don't have to have eyes waking up before you plant, but I do like to see sprouts otherwise I think there may be a presence of a combination of viruses that are all to prone to inhibit sprouting. I usually plant the tubers with the healthiest and thickest sprouts. Hair sprouts may indicate a virus or haywire.

If you plant the tubers before they wake up....whole, not cut up...they plants that emerge are usually single stem and you get larger tubers thus. If you get the eyes to sprout out ....and plant whole...the vines are usually multiple and the tubers...though more of them...are smaller as a rule.

One of the reasons why farmers cut seed from tubers aged just right is that with only one or two eyes per cut piece...they can more closely get the size of tuber they want....varieties like Yukon Gold have few eyes...therefore a cut Yukon Gold seed piece will often make a single stem and maybe only two or three tubers per hill and very large at that. The grower wants the tubers to size large and then they cut the vines down early for harvesting a few weeks later.

Tom

[wmontanez]

Jeannine,
Way to go with the raised bed. I had a window of 3-4 days of no rain and now is like every week cold and wet again. Yesterday I had half morning of sun and I prepd my tomato beds. Enough already!

I do as Salix suggests, labeling each one. I made the holes first at the proper spacing and laid the tubers next to it and added a mix of mycorrizhae and Garden tone fertilizer. I made labels by recycling a white window blind and Industrial Sharpie that is sun/weather resistant. I also played with the layout by alternating colors: white, red, blue, fingerling and it should be easier when I dig them to not confused them since I put a letter W, R, B, Fl in the back of the labels to double reference. Last year I had 2 blues side by side and when I was storing them then I doubt my labels since I was not 100% sure but luckily one is round and the other in fingerling so there is a way to find out by asking the other folks that grew them last year as well.



Owiebrian,

TPS seedlings I set outdoors at the same time as my tomatoes. I followed last year Tom's intructions scattering around the web/forums. Basically by digging a trench that is about 6" deep and burying almost all the plant but the ttop 4 or so leaves at the growing tip. The trench protects the little plant from the wind. I do bury my tomatoes also but not in trenches.

[wmontanez]

I got Yukon Gold last year as you described above, one single stem/plant per hill and tall generally. I got 3 to 5 tubers about 3-3.5 in round per plant if I left the plant die down of about 4onz each. Depends of the use but for new potatoes yukons were about 3 per plant 2.5 in. I think not too productive when I think of SVG I dug 50+ small tubers out of 3 plants. For roasting I think the later makes my day!

[Farmette]

Tom, thanks for the reply. I will give it a couple more days and then probably plant them then.

[wmontanez]

First emerging: Azule Rose, 9 days after planting~