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potatos

5

5020s rock

Member
are potatos autotoxic like alfalfa. i planted potatos on may 5,they didnt come up,dug up a couple,they rotted. replanted some red pots with lots of sprouts on may 19 and watered daily.
none have come up. this is in the same area i had pots last year. thought maybe autotoxicity?
the patch had a bunch of triple 12 fert.
 
As a kid, we had a patch of about 1/4 acre in size, that the only thing that was planted there were potatoes year after year. Normally I like to rotate my garden areas around like field crops.
 
Not that I know of. I know alot of guys who plant potatoes in the same spot for two years in a row then rotate something else in. Unless you are in a real dry spell, maybe too much watering?
 
You may have used too much fertilizer. I never fertilize the whole garden. When I grew a lot of potatoes I just sprinkled grandulated fertilizer into the furrow. I would drag a tow chain in the furrow to mix the ground and fertilizer. Then I would plant the seed potato cuttings. Once they were up nice I would side dress with more fertlizer. Try planting a few now and see if they come up. Don't apply anymore fertilizer. Hal
 
Cutting seed invites rot.I use small whole potatoes.No fertilizer until I sidedress when they are up and growing well.I have used the same area for many years with some blocks of corn some years.It takes 2 weeks for them to come up,longer if you cover too deep.
 
My dad use to plant 1/2 acre every year. I help cut the seed potatoes and dad would put in a bag of sulfer and coat them. Then he let set for two days and dry a little before we planted them. I can't remember what he said the sulfer did.
 
It got real hot and dry here last year about time to dig 'tatters, I din't have that many to start with, and I just plain wasn't feel'n it the day I dug them. Way too much time spent in the heat to get the first 5 gallon bucket when they sell for as little as they do at the store.

Any way I half hearted dug them and I have the best look'n crop I have ever had that came up volunteer this year where they had been last year. (We had such a warm and dry winter I can see how none of them rotted.)

Dave
 
I planted cut tater sets back in early march here in Central NY. The sets had sprouted in my celler prior to planting. (last years leftovers) They got nipped by frost several times in the garden, but are doing great and in bud state now. (Red Pontiacs and Yukon Golds). In the pic is the wifey, next to the peas, and behind her is 3 raised bed 4'X12' boxes of tators. I hit all our boxes hard with triple 10 and lime the first of march, and planted the tators and peas during the warm spell, the second week of March.
a72627.jpg
 
Frmers around here plant potatoes in the same fields year after year. Potatoes are big business in Montcalm County, central Michigan.
 
Around here the potatoes are planted and not watered until they have sprouted and are peaking out of the ground. One year the soil had dried out so early in the year that my uncle actually ran the sprinkler pipe across the field before he planted the crop. I would suspect too much water too early is your problem.

Steven
 
We raise potatoes in northern lower Michigan and we are on a minimum 3 year rotation. Potatoes sap alot of nutrients out of our sandy soil.
 
no. potato is technically a perennial- but grown as an annual. it is good to rotate to other crops for other reasons though.

how much triple 12 is a bunch? unless a ridiculous amount, that probably isn't the problem. commercially we would use 1800#/acre of 10-20-10. i know some other farmers used more.

unless your soil is dry as a bone, i wouldn't irrigate at all until they are up and growing. they just don't need much water until they have leaves.

2nd time around you said lots of sprouts, so this doesn't apply, but it might to the first try: don't plant potatoes from the supermarket. sometimes they have been treated with a chemical to prevent sprouting. sometimes they haven't so they will grow, but it's still not a good idea because table stock aren't held to the same standards of being disease-free as seed stock.
 
thanks for the replies. the potatos in the pic are amazing. maybe i did water too much. its "powder dry" here i was just trying to do a good thing. i didnt put on 1800#/acre equivalent of fertilizer...thats fer sure.
oh well....
 
these are the early ones I posted last week .this is a shot of them this past weekend,they are starting to bloom We took a chance and planted them in late.march ,they got frosted and turned completly black and came back again
a72656.jpg

a72658.jpg
 
I have an old letter from my great-great-great grandfather to his sons who stayed back in England when he come over with the rest of his family in the 1840's. The letter is from 1856 or 1857, and he talks of having 75 acres of potatoes growing in the Ohio River bottomland in Southern Indiana...which he reckons "will fetch a good price in New Orleans."

Now, I don't know 1850's farming techniques...but I'd imagine it was all done by hand. So imagine planting 75 acres of potatoes...then imagine digging 75 acres of potatoes. Then taking them down the Ohio and the Mississipi by flatboat. My grandfather told me that they'd take their guns on the boat, and live off the game they shot along the riverbanks, or the fish they caught out of the river. Then they'd sell the potatoes and the flatboat, and catch a steamboat back upriver to come home.

Of course, seeing as how labor-intensive the farming must've been in that day, I can also understand why my great-great grandfather became a carpenter instead of following in his father's footsteps.
 
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