Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Never done potatos before

Some more

Not been real impressed with my row of potatoes.

And my reds never even sprouted. Some boolsheet dat is.

First time delving into potato husbandry. So whatever I get, will be my teachable experience.

Potatoes grow on trees. When ripe, they fall to the ground, and you collect them.

We have 8 rows, we usually buy potato seed. But this year used what we had from last years harvest. I just mounded two rows. Tomorrow need to mound the rest, need to haul compost mix with the dirt.

Slumlord my man! We had some that didn’t sprout I was like what the [bleep]! Damn you John burns damn you happy camper. I calmed myself I dug around the area of one I planted and sob potatoes growing. If you haven’t dig around one you planted see what’s going down.

WOW... some crazy cool stuff here.

Thanks for the intel and pics.

I have much to learn on taters.

The Campfire never fails to impress on knowledge... any topic... any zone.

And here I always thought potatoes were one of the easiest things to grow. I used to grow enough potatoes, carrots and onions so that I had enough when combined with my venison to last me all winter. Hanged the potatoes in burlap sacks down in the cellar and they'd last for months. Carrots and onions were tied in bunches by their tops with baling twine and hung in the cellar too. Potatoes are best when fresh out of the ground so used to leave them in the ground as long as possible, dig one hill at a time and use those up before digging more. We don't grow them anymore as I try to avoid eating too many carbs.

I've always used Sevin for tater bugs. Once or twice during the season was all they needed. Best fertilizer for them is one lower in nitrogen like 5-10-10. Phos and potash make the root/taters grow big. The nitrogen is more for what's above ground.

You got to think of your fertilizer as up down and all around... that's how the numbers work for what you want to plant to do anyway

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.

Before I hoe all this jive again, I’ll get one of those row hiller disc thingie attachments.

Pic from this morning.

Glad I dont live in soviet socialist republic of canada…I’m going to dust the sheeyott out of these with 8 Dust (permethrin). I have ants and little beetles.




Row on the right played out and got patchy. Some of those gaps, sprouts never materialized. i didnt use “certified seed potatoes”. I just cut eyes on left overs from Peepaw’s grocery store

We have rocky, creek bottom soil, not sure how or if it will be friendly to potatoes.

An aside…I dug my footing to my house with a pick and a shovel. We didn’t have money for some lardass contractor to drill me for $1500 to dig my footers.

People get whiney around me, I tell them my hand dug footer story on 1600 sq ft home with I was 19 years old.
Oh you got Fortnite problems????

In the Pacific Northwest, I just throw the red and white potato peelings into my coffeeground and vegetable discard mulch piles.

Water them when its hot. Like a free potato farm.

Don't grow tomatoes next to them.

Nailed it .
Be careful with 10-10-10 , best intentions can send tears dow your little fat cheeks .
Kenneth

If you grow potatoes, never store them with apples. Apples produce some kind of gas that causes spuds to rot quickly.

I raised tators for a few years, but we got too much rain. This year would have been good.

I just found out that potato varieties are determinate or indeterminate kind of like tomatoes--in other words some varieties respond to hillling, others do not. The little reds I have grown for years do not need hilling.

Interesting......never heard of that. We always used an old John Deere lister we had around to create the rows/mounds before planting. Cut the eyes off of seed potatoes, plant the eyes and cover. Used the same lister to turn them over in the Fall.

Certified seed guarantees variety, nothing more.

Mom has claimed some store bought taters are treated to prevent sprouting.

We always used to bve sitting in the basement in January sprouting potatoes. Pulling sprouts off, tossing any bad ones. By late February the
ones left were soft and sprouted again. Those were left to sit. We bought
store potatoes if we ate any before harvest.

Come May, those wrinkled, sprouted taters were hauled out and we cut
then 2 eyes per chunk. In the ground untill fall.

I hated planting them. A bunch of work, and an inconsistent crop.
Usually good, but I remember one year planting 100# of seed potatoes,
And harvesting 2 1/2 bushels. Dang near just buried them and dug them
up. Not much increase for the sweat and money.

My brother is a great gardener, and he turned me onto the irish lazy bed way of planting potatoes. Looks to me to just be a raised bed method, but works really well. You might also be interested in a website called Back To Eden Gardening. Lots of good info.