Originally Posted by earlybrd
[Linked Image from i.postimg.cc] Here’s how it’s done the right way and hilled up if you plant them early enough once they bloom let them go and you’ve got taters dig them around September


Originally Posted by Rock Chuck
One of the reasons that Idaho is famous for potatoes is sandy soil. In hard soil, spuds will grow funny bumps and dips. They're darn hard to peel. Sand produces nice smooth shapes.


Yep on both of those. Where I grew up potatoes were THE cash crop for all of the big farmers. Very little corn or soybeans or even cattle pastures.....everything was potatoes. I worked several summers in potato sheds and riding the harvester. At the same time all of the farmers lost their contracts with Frito Lay...not sure where Frito Lay moved the contracts to...but after that everything became corn and soybeans.

The way earlybrd shows is how they were done. Long raised rows so they don't sit in wet soil. The "digger" for harvest was a long linked belt that would go under the row. Potatoes would ride up on it and if you were riding the harvester you'd be picking our rocks, dirt clods, snakes, rats...anything that came through before the belt carried the potatoes onto the truck riding along. Once the truck was at the shed, the potatoes go down a long conveyer belt with eveyone picking out the "bad" ones or anything else that made it onto the truck. Then through the wash, dry, and bagged to be loaded.

The sandy soil Rock Chuck mentioned is true. Not only for the smoother potatoes but for making the rows and how the dirt would filter through the linked belt when digging. The place I grew up had nice loamy rich soil that was very fine....hardly any clay like the valleys around it. It's called Sand Mountain....and though the soil isn't true "sand" it does have a sand like texture.