Potatoes 2015

[steev]

I'm so jealous of your results; between gophers, harsh climate, and drought, my spuds have never been so productive.

I've grown good spuds in the SF East Bay, but the cost of land here is astronomical and rising, so I never had more than a backyard to garden. Perhaps someday I'll have the farm's soil improved to the point that it will support good spuds.

[reed]

I'v been pleasantly surprised by our taters, expected the wet clay to maybe have rotted them but it hasn't. We don't have much storage space so I grow small patches and just dig enough for a couple meals at a time. Haven't dug any red ones yet but the Kennebecs are great.

[mnjrutherford]

Steev, is your soil the cement grade we had living in Mountain View? I'm wondering what value it might be to plant a mix of white clover & hairy vetch. We have friends locally that have a sand field. Former occupant was into dirt bikes and dumped several loads of sand on the property. They are running hogs and trying my method of just throwing seeds out over the sand in an attempt to just get biomass to mix into the sand and establish a decent soil. The husband half was showing me the results from the last few months pointing out a planted corn patch versus the tossed area. The corn tossed behind the pigs was georgous, tall, and might provide a few ears. The planted patch won't produce anything and is also being predated by squirrels. That the squirrels are not going after the plants growing behind the pigs is very interesting to me. Just not juicy enough or is there some sort of scent signal keeping them at bay?

[RpR]

I dug up a few of my potatoes yesterday for a look see.

The Cowhorns were ready to be dug and the three plants gave a dozen and one-half nice small potatoes.

On the other hand the two Victoria which had HUGE plants returned only two pullet egg, one hen egg, one goose egg and one baseball sized potato, what I feared may happen.

[RpR]

Possible problem.

My significant other had a sprinkler system installed because she said she was tired of dragging a heavy hose arould
Fine except most of the pots she has still have to be watered by hand AND she would bitch that I watered to much, this year a whole three times.
By some convoluted female form of logic, with my apologies Flowerweaver, she thinks this will lower the water bill.
It is raining and she leaves the system on.

I would shut if off but I am going let her stew in her own pot.

Now the problem, it is hitting my potatoes and they are going to get water every day.
How will this affect them?

[philagardener]

Drainage is critical. If you are growing in sand, might be OK although you could have more foliar disease issues. If you are growing in clay, the tubers may rot, leaving your stew without potatoes . . .

[steev]

Drainage is a problem on my farm; the soil is mostly silt, clay on the south end; all of it is totally mineralized; when dry, it is entirely concrete; my main labor has been to incorporate organic matter to promote friability, aid water retention, and to help my drippers to produce merging top-shaped wet spots, rather than isolated spindles.

I've not investigated my spuds yet; if I don't get to it, I figure they're just pre-planted for next year; the plants were not vigorous, so other work has seemed more probably productive.

[RpR]

Aug 18, 2015 17:34:19 GMT -5 philagardener said:

Drainage is critical. If you are growing in sand, might be OK although you could have more foliar disease issues. If you are growing in clay, the tubers may rot, leaving your stew without potatoes . . .

That garden is sandy clay plus the whole garden has a slight slant to the southwest.

[RpR]

I dug up my Saginaw Gold, four Reddale and four Victoria up North last week;Saginaw Gold gave an average return; Reddale gave an average return with potatoes a bit smaller than I hoped for as Reddale is known for whoppers; the Victoria's yield was as last year very, very good although they were also a bit smaller than I hoped for.

Down South I dug up one plan from a row planted with left-overs from last year. I planted very deep down there and I think it was a Victoria as the return was very, very good.
I had removed four baseball sized potato and a couple of marble sized ones when I though maybe I should dig deeper, I was at the depth of an average sand shovel.
I went down another eight inches and out popped three more baseball sized potatoes.

Digging out the rest down there and there are a lot, could be a bit of work if they all produce similar to that one.

[jondear]

I'm a sucker for the descriptions of potatoes in fedcos catalog. They're good at making them all sound great...

I tried 4 varieties from them this year. Best one, hands down, was Natascha. Yield was very good, plants were well behaved and stayed upright, they are early and they taste good. I got a couple small seed berries, but the plant dies down so early it's hard to mature berries on the plant. Flowers were atractive to the bees. Will grow again.

Although Peter Wilcox tastes amazing, I wish they produced a little better. Then again, I can buy run of the mill potatoes anywhere. Will grow a few next year

Strawberry paw wasn't very exciting.
Won't be growing next season.

Desirée, I grew because it's reported to be a good berry maker. Pretty average taste, but yield was pretty good. The plants were unruly. Probably won't bother with them again.

From my saved tubers...

Abenaki has good yield, plenty early, nice upright plants. Good all around white that tastes good. Will grow again.

Scotia Blue. Violet/purple skin, white flesh. Good production of nice tasting dry potao. I'll grow at least a few plants next year.

Pinto makes a decent amount of good sized awesome flavored, yellow potatoes. I read an article that said they were going to release it soon. Made a few berries as well.

Fenton Blue has great yield of purple skinned and fleshed potatoes. Baked or roasted is the way to go with this one. Berry set was excellent this year. I have tps to share around if anyone is interested. Will put on my trade list.

I grew russets from first year tubers this year. One plant had excellent yield of good shaped good tasting tubers. A lot of other plants threw odd shapes, low yield or some other dissapointment. Seed tubers will be saved from the high yielding hill.

Plants from Katahdin tps first year tubers were pretty plain. Not going to bother saving any.

Papa Cacho makes more tubers if not given the luxury of too much nitrogen. May be great for organic production. Red skin , pink flesh, hotdog shaped, super waxy. Voles ate more of these than I will this year. I'll grow some next year because they're interesting to anybody I show them to. Offspring of them tasted very good in my tps produced plants.

[paquebot]

13 varieties planted, about 230 hills total in 3 different gardens and zero irrigation. For past decade, each year I schedule 12 but add a new one while eliminating one. Gave a poor producer one more chance and had enough room to grow it.

All Blue again failed to get any size despite rich soil. Poorest showing in the 4 years that I've grown it. Gave the entire miserable harvest to a friend so that I'm not tempted to grow it again.

Carola was typical of that variety and has not changed in the 10 years or so that I've grown it. Has been consistent with medium tubers every year.

Kennebec produced many tubers of a pound or more. Has never failed to please in many years. Not many small ones this year. One of the most reliable varieties grown around here.

Mega Chip and Kennebec almost tied for big lunkers but a slight edge for them in overall production. They were developed for the potato chip industry and great for frying.

Ozette looks like a fingerling but much bigger than those. Fingerlings are not expected to produce half-pound tubers but Ozette will. Plants are almost perennial as they were still green after 4 months.

Purple Viking was the new one this year and did not disappoint. Odd thing was lack of very many small tubers. Almost everything was about the size of a baseball or a little bigger.

Red Fingerling again produce an abundance of 3' smooth tubers which are delicious no matter how they are cooked. Not certain of the origin but going to be permanent.

Redgold was second chance for that one and not certain that it deserves a third. Neither production nor size was what was expected in the two sites where it was grown. I'll give it one more year.

Red Norland was just typical Red Norland. Never changes year after year and everyone's favorite early variety.

Red Pontiac was scheduled to be gone for this year but friend talked me into growing it in her two gardens. Still does not deserve another chance.

Russet Norkotah has only been in this area for a few years and I wonder why not before. This has replaced Russet Burbank and for good reason. We got tubers up to 1¾ pounds and nothing very small.

Yukon Gold was typical of that variety in that nothing is certain until they are dug. There's either a lot of average tubers or some lunkers. 2011 was last year for big ones. This was the average year and Carola easily beat them for the two golds.

Zolushka was second year growing from full-size tubers. It is a TPS type with a lot of 3" tubers great for boiling or frying. Will remain on my schedule for some time.

Martin

[ferdzy]

Paquebot, is your red fingerling the same one I know as Red Thumb? Wasn't so impressed with it the first time I grew it, but it has survived in the garden and has been growing on me. Produces seed balls quite often too.

Purple Viking is a favourite for great flavour and decent production of big 'taters, but I find it doesn't store well. Eat 'em by New Year.

I'd love to get my hands on Ozette but have not seen it around here (i.e. Canada).

My All-Blue are a weed, and produce reasonably well, although not usually particularly large ones. It is a heavy producer of seed, which seems to come pretty true to the parent.

One I am growing that you don't see too often is Envol, developed in northern Quebec to be very early. It doesn't produce lots, but a fair quantity very quickly and gives us our summer and early fall potatoes.

I have a couple of nice potatoes from our first batch of seed grown potatoes, and in another week or so I will dig the second batch.

[richardw]

Interesting that you had TPS from your All blue, i grew that one about 20 years ago and it never did for me.

[paquebot]

Our Red Fingerling is not Red Thumb. First has yellow flesh and second has pink. I think that it is more properly called French Red Fingerling or just French Fingerling. Friend did grow a red one with pink which she bought at a supermarket organic section.

One may be able to find Ozette in BC. It's supposedly been grown by some PNW tribes for many years. Probably no commercial company has picked them up. In fact, mine came from another gardener in Washington.

There were several varieties which set fruit but we didn't bother to find out which. We found them after we were done digging. One was probably Zolushka which also set a lot of fruit last year. Other was at opposite end of the garden and could have come from any of 4 or 5 varieties.

Martin

[RpR]

I dug one row, actually part of two rows down South, mostly Victoria a few Reddales and unknown whites left over from last year.

The amount I dug up filled one of those tote boxes you get at some grocery stores. I would have dug up more but the growd was very wet and I got tired of bending over and using my hands to remove the black gumbo. It was like wet clay.
I plante deep, over ten inches down and thee whites produce good sized potatoes all the way down.

The Victorias and unknown whites produced very, very well. The Reddale and one odd colored reddish plant were average.
Although when I planted, the end of the last row was all odd-balls and they were not planted as deliberately as those before them.
I remember when I finished I chided myself for putting in more potatoes that really made sense so the last ones were planted with the thought of if they went belly-up no loss.

I treated both gardens heavily for slugs and am finding many on in the low spots when I dig.
I scrape them into the bottom of the previous hole, I do not think they will dig out of a ten plus inch grave unless the are a precursor to the zombie apocalypse.
Is it worth treating for them again?
I still have squash that will be in the garden for a few more weeks.