Kitchen Garden Forum

I've been reading up on agricultural practice in spacing small spuds closer for an overal larger crop, and this is comfirmed by suggested spacing in 'Beds', (a book on using raised beds, unsuprisingly).

They both suggest close spacings, but wondered if anyone had practical experience of planting like this.

The beds book suggested new potatoes at 30cm spaced each way in an offset pattern, and 2nd earlies and maincrop spuds spaced 30-3cm in a square pattern. (The other book's figures are a bit too complicated for me to repeat here).

This is assuming you use small seed spuds or remove all but two/three of the sprouts to get an even spacing of stems over the ground.

Thoughts anyone, it seems so radically different from other more traditional gardening books.

Hi Di,
Main crop Potatoes hereabouts are grown 15" down the row and 36" between rows. Earlies grown by my family in the south of the county are grown 12" down the row and 27" between rows. Too cold for earlies in this district. Main crops harvests are around 18-20 tons to the acre. The Potato planting has not begun here yet as we get very late frosts. They plough as deep as possible and here it is 14 inches and they plant as deep as possible so that they emerge just as the last frost have passed, or that this the intention and most times it works and no frost damage. Sometimes the tips do get burnt but they all seem to thrive none the less. No irrigation is possible and the crop relies solely on rainfall.
This give a far better potato with much more fibre
content. The crop going in here is actually a 2nd early grown as a main crop named Nadine which is a good all rounder. If the seed is small they plant two per station.
JB.

Thanks for the info JB, one further question:
Is the wide spacing between rows because the spuds need the ground space or is it just to allow access for machinery? The most efficient use of land on a garden bed scale might be to space plants evenly over the area rather than in wide rows and narrower spacing.

Thanks again

If you can get hold of a copy there is a detailed analysis in Know and Grow Vegetables of eyes per unit area which is the effective plant spacing which you can optimise. It's a bit complicated to summarise but if you can't find a copy I'll give it a go when I've got more time.

Cheers Geoff,
that is actually the other book I was looking at.(I think at your recommendation, thanks again). Some of the row spacings given there were very small 7" being the lowest, but still in wide rows.

Also the table lists quite different spaces for different varieties, but i don't know what the reasoning for that was, or how to extapolate it to the varieties I have.

As I'm on an allotment not a farm, would you say it was a safe bet to add the given spacings for within rows and between rows and half the total, to arrive at a spacing for planting on beds?

Course I could simply bung em in on the assurance that I will get some spuds, but I am a bit of an anorak, and like to experiment.

Hi Di.
I did an experiment last year with earlies in a special raised bed 4'x 8'x 1' and grew 25 Maris Bard
evenly spaced (or near enough) and planted them on the original ground level which had been dug and well manured and simply put 12" of M/P compost over the top and as the level dropped I topped it up.
I had a magnificent crop. I protected the crop with the new advanced slug pellets, harmless to all but molluscs, and had no slug or wire worm damage whatsoever.
Is this what you are intending to do?
JB.

Hi JB,
Yes pretty much, though the beds are just areas of ground that are raised by digging and manuring while the paths are trampled down.

I have put some earlies in, and got 21 or so in a similar area to yours, so sounds like I'm on track.
Maybe I could have bunched them a bit closer even as they are earlies. (But I'll resist the urge to dig them up and move them 2" to the left.)

And praise be for the new slug pellets, I know they work as I now have a clematis where there was a chewed stump a week ago. I will be spreading them around the spuds.

Di

Hi Di,
What I failed to say was that I put the slug pellets around the outside of the raised bed and none on the spud bed itself. It was amazing the amount of Keeled Slugs that were lured to the bait.
Also Maris Bard is a second early as earlies do not do very well here.
Even the commercial Main Crop are second earlies which are planted late but come to maturity as a normal main crop. It all revolves around day length.
JB.

.
Hello Di

I Googled potato spacings and came up with the info below, it is from an American site.
It is completly different to what I was lead to believe about tuber size.
When I started gardening, it was recommended that the largest seed gave the best crop. Then some years ago, the experts said that hen egg sized seed gave the best crop!
Also I plant my earlies 12 to 15inches apart and maincrop 18" apart,but they are saying 8" to 13" and have the statistics to prove it!

What do others think????

Table 1. Amount of seed needed to plant one acre of
potatoes at within-row spacings from 8 to 13 inches
and seed piece sizes from 1.5 to 3.5 ounces in 36-inch rows.

Seed piece size Within-row spacing in 36-inch rows


(ounces)-8inch 9" 10" 11" 12" 13"
1.5 ----20.4 18.2 16.3 14.8 13.6 12.6
2.0 ----27.2 24.2 21.8 19.8 18.2 16.8
2.5 ----34.0 30.3 27.2 24.7 22.7 20.9
3.0 ----40.8 36.3 32.7 29.7 27.2 25.1
3.5 ----47.6 42.4 38.1 34.6 31.8 29.3
cwt per acre

Seed piece size
Seed piece size may influence the performance of a
potato crop. Emergence, seedling vigor, subsequent plant
growth, and final yield are all related to seed piece size.
Research shows that larger seed pieces result in more total
yield than smaller sizes. However, the benefit of larger-sized
seed pieces diminishes as the size of seed pieces increases
above approximately 2.5 ounces (Iritani et al., 1984). The
optimum seed piece size depends on factors such as availability
and cost of seed, in-row spacing, and market incentives.

Thanks folks for very informative answers.

Lurganspade,

I wonder how it is that when I ask google questions I get gibberish, must be a knack to phrasing questions..