Kitchen Garden Forum

I know we are all just getting over loses to blight but while the thought is with me, (prone to senior moments) I wonder if there has been a thread covering increasing potato yeilds?

I use raised beds on the lottie, each about 10' by 4'. For my maincrop I plant 2 rows of 8 potatoes per bed using a planter which places them about 6" below the surface before earthing up. J. Seymour writes that for a deep bed they could be planted 18" deep for huge crops!

Is that a misprint?

Will the increase in depth radically improve yeild?

So far my stores run out in February, having commenced in June and I would like to be almost self sufficient in spuds but without using another bed.
Anyone experimented with depth before?

Dear WigBag, i don't use raised beds myself, but i know ridging potatoes up on normal ground certainly makes a difference.

I would have thought planting potatoes that deep would make the harvesting of them a nightmare, you couldn't be off stabbing them, and as you know it would always be the biggest that get it.

Hello Wigbag
One tip for increasing yield that I read years ago was to give the plants a really thorough watering at their 'marbling' stage. This is when the plants are beginning to form their tubers i.e. the young tubers are about the size of marbles. I don't know whether it works or not as I suppose I'd have to compare the yield from different rows - one row that had been watered and the other that hadn't.
I always try to do this watering though but this year nature did it for me!

John

John

I'll jump in and ask the obvious question here...... if the 'marbles' are anything from 6" to 18" underground how do you know what stage they are at??

Thanks

David

Hi All,

I too would like to know when the marbling takes place because I have been told that to much watering of your spuds can also reduce the yield.



Kevin

David wrote:if the 'marbles' are anything from 6" to 18" underground how do you know what stage they are at?

Hi David, I'm no expert, but believe the idea may be to:
a) Start earthing your spuds up early
b) Later, poke your hands into the loose earth round one or two of the plants.

Obviously this must cause some disturbance to the roots. For someone with a large plot of spuds, any losses are probably minimal.


Colin

You're quite right Colin. All you need to do is to scrabble about carefully in the soil underneath a few plants to find out what's going on. Any set back to the plant is minimal. In fact I always harvest my first few lots of new spuds this way - just pull a few from each plant, enough for a meal, then leave the others to grow on a bit more.
For most varieties of pots 'marbling' occurs at about the same time as the flower buds begin to form on the plants so you could use this as guide.

John

Hi WigBag,
What everybody seems to be forgetting is that you plant the mother potato about 9"-11" deep if you then earth up 9" this would explain the 18" mentioned plus.
The mother plant sends up shoots of about 9" before any new crop begins to grow. This is why sufficient earthing-up is so important the new crop actually form in the earthing-up. Commercially potatoes are sown hereabouts as deep as possible and earthed up as part of the planting process. This leaves the mother spud at least 18" to grow before the leaves start to appear so I do not find the figure of 18" unusual.
The new crop is housed in the triangle of the earthing-up and is very easily harvested.
Commercially potatoes are planted 15" apart down the row and 36" between rows. Crops of 16 tons to the acre are easily obtained this works out to a little over 3lbs per mother plant sown. On an allotment that should be quite easily obtained.
JB.

Thanks for the replies everyone.
With 8 potatoes per row in my 10 ' bed, they end up 15" apart but only 24" between the rows. So almost commercial spacing!
I am thwarted by the amount of soil available to earth up though, its a maximum of 6" I reckon.

I am writing a note for myself to leave a trench after I have dug in the muck so that my planter gains an extra 6".

As for harvesting, O.H., sad man that I am, my potato fork makes several passes and I certainly get down to 12" below the mean surface level. The bed is not compacted as I do'nt walk on it so using the fork is fairly straight forward.