I grew up in central ND, sandy soil in the higher garden , sandy/river-bottom loam down over the bluff in the old river-bed, where we had one of the gardens. We always had at least a half acre of spuds, up to an acre, good production, stored in basement bins over the winter. Don't recall ever watering them, but probably did. Temps were often 90-100; didn't seem to hurt the taters any.
I do remember moving sprinklers around the garden, but not the taters specifically. Hoe-ed weeds, mounded, and dusted pestucude for bugs, yes. Often ran a herd of 20-30 white turkeys through the garden twice daily for grass-hoppers. I hated those damned birds (totally untrainable or manageable), but hoppers once removed are quite digestible..
. I'm hard put to decide which I hated worse- pigs or turkeys, which are on opposite ends of the animal intelligence spectrum. (I was too smart for one, too dumb for the other
)
The birds were crazy for grass-hoppers, and it cut the feed bill considerably. We wuz "green' before it was a fad, or even identified. I wasn't born cheap- I was raised that way!
We had a home built row-marker with 3 or 4 teeth to drag row lines in the soil. Left-over taters from year before were cut with 2 eyes to the piece, and planted with a nifty device- commercial, but I have never seen another. It was basically a 4" tube about 30 inches long, with open top end with a handle. The bottom was a spring-loaded alligator snout, with a foot in front of it. Just walk down the row, with a sack of cuts on one's hip, dropping a seed into the planter with every step, jabbing it into the ground, pushing forward and lifting up. That dropped the seed into the hole created. Your next step came down on it and sealed it, about 3 inches deep, as you did the next seed-plant. Get the rythem right and one could plant a hellacious amount of potatoes in a day!
We fertilized with chicken manure- composted was best. Fresh stuff can get chancy if you use too much.
Taters will grow damned near anywhere- from a coal-ash pile (I dumped some left-over seed there, once, in ND.), to essentially straight peat, on my brother's land outside of Fairbanks. My soil here is about 18-24 feet of clay/silt/loamy stuff ( commonly referred to by some, when wet, as "loon shiett) over a layer of sand. Best to mix it up thouroughly using a backhoe or such, to 3 feet deep or so for good garden soil. Add a little of Ironbender's finest composted horseyshitt and I should be golden!. Next year, I'll have enough garden space, I hope, to plant a few taters. Gotta do some clearing first.
I grew a nice crop in Galena some years ago, after tilling up the scraggly lawn in front of the apartment of fairly heavy Yukon River flood-plain silt-soil.
Hell even the over-populated Irish could grow them, using Joe Biden's "planting tips for farmers". Until the blight caught up with them.
And that's how America got starving Irish up the ying-yang.......
Once you have potato scab, or blight, in the soil, you are so fugged. Best to rotate potato patches annually, or even tri-annually also.
Of course, YMMV for productivity, depending on soil, season, climate, and annual weather, care, etc. I read somewhere that in SA, where potatoes originated, the locals would grow several varieties at different locations/elevations, minimizing the chance of catestrophic crop failure due to seasonal weather, etc.
