RE: Planting Spuds - How do you do it?
Dear Hugh, You wrote: My experience is give them a good solid boost from the chunk of potato behind them and you can rely on getting a good yield...And I can't afford hauling out compost Hugh, are you farming on moderate to high clay % soil? I am growing in sandy soil (15 - 20%) and am finding that the quality of my potatoes suffers if I don't use lots of compost - both physical quality and health - without compost at planting, the skins are rough, flesh not as creamy and potato scab and marbling (misshapen potatoes, some with large round bumps - apparently caused by nematodes) are becoming more common. On top of that, I don't cut the potatoes - use whole, small seed potatoes at each planting. And there may be other things that would help. (In your post on peroxide.) A leading statement - so the question, such as what? I am doing everything by hand in soil which has a well aerated A horizon (20 - 30 cm) and soft plinthite for the B horizon (good water holding for the deeper rooted crops). I plan to use alot more Effective Micro-organisms (EM) (Kyusei Nature Farming) through irrigation, than in the past, which will improve the aeration of the soil. Also, I assume that a peroxide bath will have a similar effect when planting onion sets? You mention than you use peroxide and BD 500 on the potatoes. I assume the sequence is the peroxide bath is first, then allow the spuds to dry, then the BD 500 bath. Other way round, the peroxide would kill the microbes in the BD 500 - not so? I have started bathing my seed potatoes in EM with the current planting, and wish to combine this with the peroxide treatment with my next planting (later this week). Thanks for your posts on the subject. By the way, what is a spading machine? Stephen Barrow
RE: Planting Spuds - How do you do it?
Stephen, Yes, I'm growing on clay. Great stuff once you get some life into it. Compost needn't be much on these soils any more, though once I was using huge quantities of it like you seem to be. Best, Hugh Dear Hugh, You wrote: My experience is give them a good solid boost from the chunk of potato behind them and you can rely on getting a good yield...And I can't afford hauling out compost Hugh, are you farming on moderate to high clay % soil? I am growing in sandy soil (15 - 20%) and am finding that the quality of my potatoes suffers if I don't use lots of compost - both physical quality and health - without compost at planting, the skins are rough, flesh not as creamy and potato scab and marbling (misshapen potatoes, some with large round bumps - apparently caused by nematodes) are becoming more common. On top of that, I don't cut the potatoes - use whole, small seed potatoes at each planting. And there may be other things that would help. (In your post on peroxide.) A leading statement - so the question, such as what? I am doing everything by hand in soil which has a well aerated A horizon (20 - 30 cm) and soft plinthite for the B horizon (good water holding for the deeper rooted crops). I plan to use alot more Effective Micro-organisms (EM) (Kyusei Nature Farming) through irrigation, than in the past, which will improve the aeration of the soil. Also, I assume that a peroxide bath will have a similar effect when planting onion sets? You mention than you use peroxide and BD 500 on the potatoes. I assume the sequence is the peroxide bath is first, then allow the spuds to dry, then the BD 500 bath. Other way round, the peroxide would kill the microbes in the BD 500 - not so? I have started bathing my seed potatoes in EM with the current planting, and wish to combine this with the peroxide treatment with my next planting (later this week). Thanks for your posts on the subject. By the way, what is a spading machine? Stephen Barrow
Re: Planting Spuds - How do you do it?
Dear Gil, Good stuff. But I'm not nursing potatoes on high compost stuff. I plant them direct in spading machine spaded soil and no fertilizer whatsoever. So they have to get off to a great start on their own. My experience is give them a good solid boost from the chunck of potato behind them and you can rely on getting a good yield. I can't afford poor yields. And I can't afford hauling out compost when potatoes given H2O2 and 500 will get it in gear like gangbusters without compost given a little hay mulch. So I'm not talking what wonders can happen, but what wonders can easily, reliably result in good yields. If I were a potato breeder working with tissue samples and cloning in petri dishes I would be taking it a step further than Kieth Gross, who was, of course, right on target with what he was doing. Best, Hugh Hi! Hugh, Thank you for posting how to on spuds. This may be of interest to the list. Back in the 1940s or 1950s, a cousin of my mother's, Keith Gross, won the Australian record for amount of potatoes grown from one pound of seed potato. He was a mixed farmer from Clarendon, Adelaide, South Australia. As I recall, he produced 32 CWT from One Pound. He split each eye into four and turned in ten inches of well composted cow manure. It was supervised by the Local Agricultural Bureau. It stood for many years, but eventually bettered by some one in the US. To check it out I have actually split eyes into four and they will produce viable plants. Gross's ancestry was that of the early migrants from the part of what was then Germany and is now part of Poland and may well have had some of the same traditional knowledge as RS. That family was among the best farmers in our area. Gil Hugh Lovel wrote: Planting Potatoes--A Few Tips With smaller potatoes one may plant the whole potato, but with larger ones it is good to cut them up into sets. Be sure to cut these up so there is a considerable chunk of potato as an energy source to kick off the new plant. Anything smaller than about the size of a grade A large egg is marginal. One end of the potato will have a concentration of eyes. If one plants a cutting from this end it sometimes will make a bushy plant with lots of little potatoes and no big ones. The opposite end will be where the stem was that fed the development of the potato. This stem scar is NOT an eye and won't sprout. Each set must have at least one eye and maybe it is preferable to strive for two. I spade my potato patch with my FALC spading machine so I have a series of 40 inch wide beds. If it was in grass or rye I do this every week for about three or four weeks, planning on planting around mid April in my region (which I guess is zone 7). Because everyone is buying out the stores for potato seed at this time I make sure to buy seed potatoes early. I store these on the porch so they stay cool and get a little light and do NOT develop spindly, long shoots that break off easily. After cutting my sets I soak them in a bath of hydrogen peroxide using a pint of drug store 3% in 5 gallons of water. Then I give them a dip in BD 500 and lay them out down the bed in a three row intensive pattern. The middle row is 20 inches from each side of the bed and about 2 feet apart per set. The side rows are parallel to each other and twelve inches from the center or eight inches from the edges. But the potato sets are offest 12 inches from the center row so the sets are spaced midway between the sets in center row. This looks like the arrangement of pips on dice for fives. When the bed is laid out I tuck the sets in with the eyes pointing up. Then I unroll a round bale of hay down the bed and try to even out the too heavy spots by spreading them on the too thin spots. After that I do nothing, other than mowing the paths between beds while the potatos are young, until I dig potatoes. I dig potatoes with my spring tooth harrows with its outer feet taken off. I have to make several passes to bring the potatoes all to light. Even then I inevitably miss a few, but it sure beats digging with a shovel. Best, Hugh Mind sharing how you plant and manage your potatoes? I've been very disappointed with my crops the past two years. Doing great on the freedom from bugs and pretty good on the freedom from blight (last year I mis-identified a fungal attack for sunscald and lost a whole row of a variety by responding two late. For whatever reason, an application of equisetum tea brought the others through, however. Hugh tells me that he doesn't hill any more. He mulches with old hay. (Anyone got good tips for unrolling big bales??) I've got lots of old straw, but straw holds so much water, it kind of worries me to have it around the spuds. I did lose a crop of spuds one year by apply hay after the tops had come up: they melted away with fungus withing the week. Woody's suggestion of dipping the cut pieces in a slurry of local clay and BC has
Re: Planting Spuds - How do you do it?
Thanks Hugh, all points taken and agreed. There is of cause a great difference between a financially serviving crop and a smart arse unbelievable and possibly non repeatable one. I am very interested in your use of Corn as a soil builder. There was a feature on someone in Mexico, in the old Permaculture International Journal (now sadly folded), who was recovering totally devastated land in a few years with a dual cycle of corn and legumes. He was taking former rain forest that had been converted to desert and rehabilitating it and getting land less peasants on their own land with his technique. From memory and without looking it up, he was a Permaculturist and connected to a University. Unfortunately, corn grows here in our high water need period. Gil Hugh Lovel wrote: Dear Gil, Good stuff. But I'm not nursing potatoes on high compost stuff. I plant them direct in spading machine spaded soil and no fertilizer whatsoever. So they have to get off to a great start on their own. My experience is give them a good solid boost from the chunck of potato behind them and you can rely on getting a good yield. I can't afford poor yields. And I can't afford hauling out compost when potatoes given H2O2 and 500 will get it in gear like gangbusters without compost given a little hay mulch. So I'm not talking what wonders can happen, but what wonders can easily, reliably result in good yields. If I were a potato breeder working with tissue samples and cloning in petri dishes I would be taking it a step further than Kieth Gross, who was, of course, right on target with what he was doing. Best, Hugh Hi! Hugh, Thank you for posting how to on spuds. This may be of interest to the list. Back in the 1940s or 1950s, a cousin of my mother's, Keith Gross, won the Australian record for amount of potatoes grown from one pound of seed potato. He was a mixed farmer from Clarendon, Adelaide, South Australia. As I recall, he produced 32 CWT from One Pound. He split each eye into four and turned in ten inches of well composted cow manure. It was supervised by the Local Agricultural Bureau. It stood for many years, but eventually bettered by some one in the US. To check it out I have actually split eyes into four and they will produce viable plants. Gross's ancestry was that of the early migrants from the part of what was then Germany and is now part of Poland and may well have had some of the same traditional knowledge as RS. That family was among the best farmers in our area. Gil Hugh Lovel wrote: Planting Potatoes--A Few Tips With smaller potatoes one may plant the whole potato, but with larger ones it is good to cut them up into sets. Be sure to cut these up so there is a considerable chunk of potato as an energy source to kick off the new plant. Anything smaller than about the size of a grade A large egg is marginal. One end of the potato will have a concentration of eyes. If one plants a cutting from this end it sometimes will make a bushy plant with lots of little potatoes and no big ones. The opposite end will be where the stem was that fed the development of the potato. This stem scar is NOT an eye and won't sprout. Each set must have at least one eye and maybe it is preferable to strive for two. I spade my potato patch with my FALC spading machine so I have a series of 40 inch wide beds. If it was in grass or rye I do this every week for about three or four weeks, planning on planting around mid April in my region (which I guess is zone 7). Because everyone is buying out the stores for potato seed at this time I make sure to buy seed potatoes early. I store these on the porch so they stay cool and get a little light and do NOT develop spindly, long shoots that break off easily. After cutting my sets I soak them in a bath of hydrogen peroxide using a pint of drug store 3% in 5 gallons of water. Then I give them a dip in BD 500 and lay them out down the bed in a three row intensive pattern. The middle row is 20 inches from each side of the bed and about 2 feet apart per set. The side rows are parallel to each other and twelve inches from the center or eight inches from the edges. But the potato sets are offest 12 inches from the center row so the sets are spaced midway between the sets in center row. This looks like the arrangement of pips on dice for fives. When the bed is laid out I tuck the sets in with the eyes pointing up. Then I unroll a round bale of hay down the bed and try to even out the too heavy spots by spreading them on the too thin spots. After that I do nothing, other than mowing the paths between beds while the potatos are young, until I dig potatoes. I dig potatoes with my spring tooth harrows with its outer feet taken off. I have to make several passes to bring the potatoes all to light. Even then I inevitably miss a few, but it sure beats digging with a shovel.
RE: Planting Spuds - How do you do it?
Hugh, In your post on potatoes you stated that you soak the potato sets in peroxide - is this just to ensure that the cut surfaces do not become infected, or do you do this with whole potatoes as well? If so, does it help in keeping the potato plants healthy? Thanks Stephen Barrow Dear Stephen, Potatoes love oxygen. So I soak even the smaller whole potatoes in the peroxide bath. When I buy potato seed I think the peroxide helps clean them up. I've had some pretty funky seed potatoes. But all along the line I think you should maximise the oxygen for potatoes. If you don't have a spading machine, for instance, you should subsoil. And barring that you should hill. And there may be other things that would help. Best, Hugh
Re: Questions for Hugh was Re: Planting Spuds - How do you do it?
Hugh - thanks for the good post on how you manage your spuds. Questions come to mind. How deeply do you mulch with hay? Allan, About whatever comes off the bale, But thats a couple inches. How do you unroll the bales? I get it in the right direction and roll (downhill). Your harvesting sounds like you are using a harrow to pull the spuds of the soil but if the seed potato is only under the mulch all the 'new' potatoes would occur above it. I must be reading this wrong. Are you harvesting spuds from the mulch or from the soil? Didn't I say I lay the spuds out and then tuck them in? I tuck the set into the ground about 2 to 3 inches, so the spuds, which form above the roots, don't all sit on the surface. I don't want any on the surface because if they don't have enough hay on them they turn green Do you use any foliar sprays? (fish? kelp?) I expect to try some. Do you side dress with compost or fertilizer at any point? No. Only the field broadcaster. What legume are you growing in your paths nowadays? I like white dutch clover. Best, Hugh thanks again -Allan
Re: Planting Spuds - How do you do it?
Planting Potatoes--A Few Tips With smaller potatoes one may plant the whole potato, but with larger ones it is good to cut them up into sets. Be sure to cut these up so there is a considerable chunk of potato as an energy source to kick off the new plant. Anything smaller than about the size of a grade A large egg is marginal. One end of the potato will have a concentration of eyes. If one plants a cutting from this end it sometimes will make a bushy plant with lots of little potatoes and no big ones. The opposite end will be where the stem was that fed the development of the potato. This stem scar is NOT an eye and won't sprout. Each set must have at least one eye and maybe it is preferable to strive for two. I spade my potato patch with my FALC spading machine so I have a series of 40 inch wide beds. If it was in grass or rye I do this every week for about three or four weeks, planning on planting around mid April in my region (which I guess is zone 7). Because everyone is buying out the stores for potato seed at this time I make sure to buy seed potatoes early. I store these on the porch so they stay cool and get a little light and do NOT develop spindly, long shoots that break off easily. After cutting my sets I soak them in a bath of hydrogen peroxide using a pint of drug store 3% in 5 gallons of water. Then I give them a dip in BD 500 and lay them out down the bed in a three row intensive pattern. The middle row is 20 inches from each side of the bed and about 2 feet apart per set. The side rows are parallel to each other and twelve inches from the center or eight inches from the edges. But the potato sets are offest 12 inches from the center row so the sets are spaced midway between the sets in center row. This looks like the arrangement of pips on dice for fives. When the bed is laid out I tuck the sets in with the eyes pointing up. Then I unroll a round bale of hay down the bed and try to even out the too heavy spots by spreading them on the too thin spots. After that I do nothing, other than mowing the paths between beds while the potatos are young, until I dig potatoes. I dig potatoes with my spring tooth harrows with its outer feet taken off. I have to make several passes to bring the potatoes all to light. Even then I inevitably miss a few, but it sure beats digging with a shovel. Best, Hugh Mind sharing how you plant and manage your potatoes? I've been very disappointed with my crops the past two years. Doing great on the freedom from bugs and pretty good on the freedom from blight (last year I mis-identified a fungal attack for sunscald and lost a whole row of a variety by responding two late. For whatever reason, an application of equisetum tea brought the others through, however. Hugh tells me that he doesn't hill any more. He mulches with old hay. (Anyone got good tips for unrolling big bales??) I've got lots of old straw, but straw holds so much water, it kind of worries me to have it around the spuds. I did lose a crop of spuds one year by apply hay after the tops had come up: they melted away with fungus withing the week. Woody's suggestion of dipping the cut pieces in a slurry of local clay and BC has worked very well for us. I don't think we ever have a cutting that doesn't result in a plant. A good geek question for me: my Albrecht report suggests two tons of lime an acres. The area I want to put the spuds in has not been limed (the pH is 6.8) and I'd like to lime it after I put the spuds in but most sources say to not lime a spud patch because it leads to scab. For myself, however, I can easily suspect that my low yields could be attributed to not enough calcium-based lime in the soils (Ideas?) How do you do your spuds?
Re: Planting Spuds - How do you do it?
Hugh... a couple of quick queries. On 13 Mar 02, you wrote: ---8--- After that I do nothing, other than mowing the paths between beds while the potatos are young, until I dig potatoes. How wide are the grass paths and what type of mower do you use? From the photographs in 'Acres USA' the strips appear too narrow to mow with a tractor without running on the beds and the total area such that it would become tedious without some form of mechanisation. Thanks... Rex
Questions for Hugh was Re: Planting Spuds - How do you do it?
Hugh - thanks for the good post on how you manage your spuds. Questions come to mind. How deeply do you mulch with hay? How do you unroll the bales? Your harvesting sounds like you are using a harrow to pull the spuds of the soil but if the seed potato is only under the mulch all the 'new' potatoes would occur above it. I must be reading this wrong. Are you harvesting spuds from the mulch or from the soil? Do you use any foliar sprays? (fish? kelp?) Do you side dress with compost or fertilizer at any point? What legume are you growing in your paths nowadays? thanks again -Allan
Re: Planting Spuds - How do you do it?
The Organic Gardening encyclopedia say 30# per 1000 sq ft on sand to 80# per 1000 sq ft on clay will raise the ph one unit. Having put about 4 tons to the ac of quarry siftings about 9 years ago I would say that their unit would be a raise from lets say 6.1 to 6.2. I would be a little more concerned about any change in PH in your case, since 6.8 is at the top of the range for spuds. Also if your PH is 6.8 and your calcium is low, There's a good chance that the sulfur may be lacking which could also show up as a fungal problem in an off year. Chris If I understand correctly, it takes a hell of a lot of high calcium lime to actually change the pH. Am I wrong about this? -Allan
Planting Spuds - How do you do it?
Mind sharing how you plant and manage your potatoes? I've been very disappointed with my crops the past two years. Doing great on the freedom from bugs and pretty good on the freedom from blight (last year I mis-identified a fungal attack for sunscald and lost a whole row of a variety by responding two late. For whatever reason, an application of equisetum tea brought the others through, however. Hugh tells me that he doesn't hill any more. He mulches with old hay. (Anyone got good tips for unrolling big bales??) I've got lots of old straw, but straw holds so much water, it kind of worries me to have it around the spuds. I did lose a crop of spuds one year by apply hay after the tops had come up: they melted away with fungus withing the week. Woody's suggestion of dipping the cut pieces in a slurry of local clay and BC has worked very well for us. I don't think we ever have a cutting that doesn't result in a plant. A good geek question for me: my Albrecht report suggests two tons of lime an acres. The area I want to put the spuds in has not been limed (the pH is 6.8) and I'd like to lime it after I put the spuds in but most sources say to not lime a spud patch because it leads to scab. For myself, however, I can easily suspect that my low yields could be attributed to not enough calcium-based lime in the soils (Ideas?) How do you do your spuds?
Re: Planting Spuds - How do you do it?
It's a little bit of work but less than mulching by hand. I dig a shallow trench with a potato plow, then put abut 11/2 of well aged compost in the trench and lay the seed on top of that. Then I cover them up with a cultivator. I think they respond well to the slightly more acidic nature of the compost and the compost helps with drainage while also holding moisture in dry spells. I started doing it to optimize my compost use (it takes a lot less) but continued because it worked so well. As an added plus the taters come out of the ground like they've already been washed. Mind sharing how you plant and manage your potatoes? I've been very disappointed with my crops the past two years. Doing great on the freedom from bugs and pretty good on the freedom from blight (last year I mis-identified a fungal attack for sunscald and lost a whole row of a variety by responding two late. For whatever reason, an application of equisetum tea brought the others through, however. Hugh tells me that he doesn't hill any more. He mulches with old hay. (Anyone got good tips for unrolling big bales??) I've got lots of old straw, but straw holds so much water, it kind of worries me to have it around the spuds. I did lose a crop of spuds one year by apply hay after the tops had come up: they melted away with fungus withing the week. Woody's suggestion of dipping the cut pieces in a slurry of local clay and BC has worked very well for us. I don't think we ever have a cutting that doesn't result in a plant. A good geek question for me: my Albrecht report suggests two tons of lime an acres. The area I want to put the spuds in has not been limed (the pH is 6.8) and I'd like to lime it after I put the spuds in but most sources say to not lime a spud patch because it leads to scab. For myself, however, I can easily suspect that my low yields could be attributed to not enough calcium-based lime in the soils (Ideas?) How do you do your spuds?
Re: Planting Spuds - How do you do it?
Allan - Gypsum increases calcium w/o introducing lime or changing the ph. Also colloidal phosphate is a good source of calcium. Aragonite is a great low-mag source of calcium, but it will also raise the ph. Finally, a serving of Azomite never hurt anything. Eh? Best, Essie At 08:55 AM 3/11/02 -0500, you wrote: Mind sharing how you plant and manage your potatoes? I've been very disappointed with my crops the past two years. Doing great on the freedom from bugs and pretty good on the freedom from blight (last year I mis-identified a fungal attack for sunscald and lost a whole row of a variety by responding two late. For whatever reason, an application of equisetum tea brought the others through, however. Hugh tells me that he doesn't hill any more. He mulches with old hay. (Anyone got good tips for unrolling big bales??) I've got lots of old straw, but straw holds so much water, it kind of worries me to have it around the spuds. I did lose a crop of spuds one year by apply hay after the tops had come up: they melted away with fungus withing the week. Woody's suggestion of dipping the cut pieces in a slurry of local clay and BC has worked very well for us. I don't think we ever have a cutting that doesn't result in a plant. A good geek question for me: my Albrecht report suggests two tons of lime an acres. The area I want to put the spuds in has not been limed (the pH is 6.8) and I'd like to lime it after I put the spuds in but most sources say to not lime a spud patch because it leads to scab. For myself, however, I can easily suspect that my low yields could be attributed to not enough calcium-based lime in the soils (Ideas?) How do you do your spuds?
Re: Planting Spuds - How do you do it?
It's a little bit of work but less than mulching by hand. I dig a shallow trench with a potato plow, then put abut 11/2 of well aged compost in the trench and lay the seed on top of that. Then I cover them up with a cultivator. I think they respond well to the slightly more acidic nature of the compost and the compost helps with drainage while also holding moisture in dry spells. I started doing it to optimize my compost use (it takes a lot less) but continued because it worked so well. As an added plus the taters come out of the ground like they've already been washed. So no mulching, then? -Allan
Re: Planting Spuds - How do you do it?
Allan - Gypsum increases calcium w/o introducing lime or changing the ph. Also colloidal phosphate is a good source of calcium. Aragonite is a great low-mag source of calcium, but it will also raise the ph. Finally, a serving of Azomite never hurt anything. Eh? Best, Essie Always use the azomite, Essie! ;-) If I understand correctly, it takes a hell of a lot of high calcium lime to actually change the pH. Am I wrong about this? -Allan
Long reply - RE: Planting Spuds - How do you do it?
Hi Allan, I am harvesting my third crop of organic spuds and busy planting the fourth, that means spring and autumn plantings over two years. To summarise my experience: 1 First planting (spring) did not have compost, but went into soil which had been under weeds for almost 6 years. They were irrigated with about 20 mm per week These sups were lovely and creamy (good for any type of eating) and had a good shelf life. However, their skins were thin and split when harvested and also during cooking. A local supermarket chain wanted them, but declined after their trial cooking tests because of the skins bursting. I never found out what the cause of that was. However, my direct customers were thrilled, with many UK Nationals saying that they hadn't had potatoes like those since their childhood in the UK. 2 Second planting (autumn) went into soil which had been heavily composted (10 cm layer of horse manure / pine shaving based compost, not the best in the world) and which had been fallow for about 2 months prior to planting (as I was not very happy with the quality of the compost). We dug 20 cm deep trenches, planted the potatoes and covered with a layer of straw mulch. This was a copy of the method employed by a friend. The idea was to shovel the soil back into the trenches as the spuds grew. That never happened for various reasons, and so the sups landed up growing in subsoil, without the benefit of the compost, other that what had leached into the profile. Those spuds were not as good as the first planting, but better than conventional. 3 Third planting was into soil which was heavily composted about 12 months before, and had produced a wonderful winter crop of cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, spinach and beetroot, the soil having been turned after these crops were harvested. These potatoes have been good eating (roasting better than boiling and baking), but still not the same quality as the very first planting. 4 I have in the meantime planted about 50 comfrey plants, for use in my current planting. The procedure has been somewhat different than before, due to a shortage of labour and managerial time. The field has been fallow and under weeds for 4 months, but has been regularly mowed, thereby acting as a green manure / in situ mulch. Small holes have been dug for each seed potato. However, a comfrey leaf and handful of compost (my compost volumes have dropped dramatically, as I had spent a year collecting stable bedding and manure before the second planting) are placed in the hole, the seed potato on top and then covered with soil. These spuds are only just starting to show their first leaves, so I don't know what they will be like. The theory is that the comfrey gives them the calcium they need in otherwise calcium poor soil. Some notes: 5. The third planting was into soil with a pH 5,5 - 6 (water), which is considered ideal for summer rainfall areas in South Africa. However, the lands are infested with nutsedge (Cyperus esculentus, Kyllinga alba and K. erecta) as well as False garlic (Nothoscordum gracile) and some of the potatoes had scab (Streptomyces scabies). I read somewhere (can't find the reference now) that the weeds indicate an acidic pH, the scab an alkaline pH, yet the pH readings were supposedly OK! I have not resolved this one, unless the pH (KCl) should be 5,5 - 6. Even then, I don't know what the answer would be. 6 Some of the potatoes have bumps, called marbles, on them. This just disfigures the potato, but does not affect the taste. Unconfirmed diagnosis is that this is because of one of the nematodes. 7 My soils are sandy (20 % clay). 8 Some of the first planting had gem squash and marrows as companion plants (adjacent marrows and squash grew into the potato field). Surprisingly, those marrows and squash which grew with the potatoes were NOT stung, while those adjacent to the potatoes were! 9 Hollow heart was a problem in the first planting, due to soil deficiency in Mo. I foliar fed (two sprayings) subsequent plantings with Mo and B which seems have had the desired effect. I think that three sprayings are needed though. 10 Finally, spraying with Effective Micro-organisms (Kyusei Nature Farming), has helped with early blight and delayed late blight. The late blight now comes when the plants start dying off in any case, which I believe is a natural consequence of senescence. Seaweed extract foliar feeding has also been worthwhile. I have not had much success in finding out about organic potato production. So I hope that this helps. Best wishes Stephen Barrow
Re: Planting Spuds - How do you do it?
Re :Spuds. Ive used Kristy's procedure, and covered with straw..6. Mice got a little. but they were sure clean. Most migrated upwards a little into the straw. I'm assuming you use the method known in some bd circles : that of cutting a square plug (about an inch square +/- )around the individual eyes of the seed spud, and tapering decreasingly towards the centre of the spud, thereby trimming the bulk of the tuber to a minimum. Apparently, the less of the original bulk is accessible, the more the sprout seeks surrounding nutrient source. Also, this minimizes rot potential. And there is the leading end of the spud to consider for preference. I don't always have time to do them all that way, and i have not been able to determine conclusively yield/quality differences because of other variables year - year. If your round haybales are the same size as the straw ones, 2,3 people should be able to manage after determining the machine-rolled direction by peeling a layer or 2. If not,: I made a spear out of 1- pipe, a foot longer than the balewidth, with a solid welded point in the one end, and a hole drilled through it to pin-retain a larger diam. pipeflange. On the other end, threaded a 1 flange onto it. Spear/drive this thru the centre of the bale. Over these flanges i looped a rope's-ends by which to pull the bale with the tractor. It just helps to have someone back there monitoring/ raking off the right thickness of the peeling layers. ..manfred - Original Message - From: Allan Balliett [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, March 11, 2002 5:55 AM Subject: Planting Spuds - How do you do it? Mind sharing how you plant and manage your potatoes? I've been very disappointed with my crops the past two years. Doing great on the freedom from bugs and pretty good on the freedom from blight (last year I mis-identified a fungal attack for sunscald and lost a whole row of a variety by responding two late. For whatever reason, an application of equisetum tea brought the others through, however. Hugh tells me that he doesn't hill any more. He mulches with old hay. (Anyone got good tips for unrolling big bales??) I've got lots of old straw, but straw holds so much water, it kind of worries me to have it around the spuds. I did lose a crop of spuds one year by apply hay after the tops had come up: they melted away with fungus withing the week. Woody's suggestion of dipping the cut pieces in a slurry of local clay and BC has worked very well for us. I don't think we ever have a cutting that doesn't result in a plant. A good geek question for me: my Albrecht report suggests two tons of lime an acres. The area I want to put the spuds in has not been limed (the pH is 6.8) and I'd like to lime it after I put the spuds in but most sources say to not lime a spud patch because it leads to scab. For myself, however, I can easily suspect that my low yields could be attributed to not enough calcium-based lime in the soils (Ideas?) How do you do your spuds?
Re: Planting Spuds - How do you do it?
No mulching. I've done both and find that loosening up the soil with cultivation to give better results. Chris It's a little bit of work but less than mulching by hand. I dig a shallow trench with a potato plow, then put abut 11/2 of well aged compost in the trench and lay the seed on top of that. Then I cover them up with a cultivator. I think they respond well to the slightly more acidic nature of the compost and the compost helps with drainage while also holding moisture in dry spells. I started doing it to optimize my compost use (it takes a lot less) but continued because it worked so well. As an added plus the taters come out of the ground like they've already been washed. So no mulching, then? -Allan
