Well, I like yukon gold, red pontiacs and kenebecs.
Usually have good luck with them if I can get them in the ground in mid-March.
How are you growing yours, whats your secrets?
LOL! Usually, yep, I have good luck until last year when the floods came early and persisted too long!
2009 = total crop failure!
I would love to try potatoes again but the one time we did, we got ourselves an amazing crop of Colorado potato beetles, who have hung out in our garden ever since. Gardeners Supply has a potato-growing bag that might be just the thing, though, if I could grow them far enough away from my main veggie garden. We like Yukon Gold; I'm not familiar with Red Pontiacs and Kenebecs. What are the advantages of those?
Early, late and middle season varieties! Dont ask me which is which though, I forgot!
Now is our potato growing season. I'm trying russian banana fingerlings. So far, they seem to be much weaker than the other potatoes. I also grow red pontiac, red gold, white cobbler and yukon golds.
Calalily, you'll love the fingerlings. I started growing them in 2008 and I've yet to have fed them to anyone that hasn't fell madly in love with them. I read somewhere they're like new potatoes that can be stored. Try roasting them when you harvest.
I've read a lot of good things about them. I just wish they were a little tougher plant.
Those fingerlings sound good!
Ok, if I am not mistaken and someone please correct me if I am wrong, the yukons mature first, then the pontiacs and then the kennebecs.
Either way you can plant these at the same time and then get a successive crop just with these three varieties.
I have however left them all in the ground and harvested them at once and without issues.
So how are you guys planting them? We have tried various ways. I have taken previous years taters that were left in storage too long that started growing in the pantry and sliced them and put them in the garden. We usually try to plant about 6 inches deep.
We will use a cultivator and plant behind that. As the implements shovels go into the ground we drop the potatoes in the furrows and the implement will bury the taters, well that is if you time your drop right. Sitting onthe back of it and dropping them in by hand is not easy! But beats the heck out of doing it by hand.
March is our best month. The ground is cold and wet. But sometimes too wet and planting can get delayed. We grow organic using horse manure and wood chips
Aint nothing more tasty than a home grown potato. I never liked to eat potates much before, but since we have been growing our own...nothing tops it.
When we harvest we take the cultivator and plow the patch and then walk the patch and pick them up by hand.
Does two jobs at once! Harvests and prepares the feild for the next crop.
As far as potato bugs...yeah, some years we have had them. Other years not. And on a bad year we have resorted to using Sevin.
Field got a rest this season with the pathetic crop so we should not have any potatoe insects nect year, but that is always debatable when the time comes.
Last season I experimented with planting potatoes. The first ones I dug a trench, planted the potato, covered with a couple of inches of soil and filled in the trench as the plant grew. I then mulched with straw. The plants did well, the wind blew them around a bit, but got a good harvest.
I also tried digging a trench, planting the potato, filling the trench with compost and then mulching once the plants were good size. This worked best.
This year I planted the potatoes shallow and am adding compost as they grow. I've already had trouble with a potassium deficiency in the potatoes this season. I think it was from planting too early even though Texas A&M recommended August planting in our area. Next year I won't even try planting them before end of Sept. The potatoes planted a couple of weeks ago are popping up and look great.
drool!
LSU says for me to plant July 25-Aug 10. I covered as they grew and they have always looked sad. Judging by the size of the tops, there can't be much going on in the soil. It has been hot and maybe that's their problem. They better hurry up or there will be a killer frost. Last year I planted later, got beautiful tops and then the frost. I think I got 5 taters out of the lot. Then last spring they started off with a bang and then got blight and wevils. I'm a tater challenged gardener.
The slugs got my potatoes this year. They tunnel inside the baby taters and leave nothing but the skin.
Dontcha just hate that!
I was extremely disappointed in the potato toad.
Well, who wouldnt be if they got the slug! Cant say we have had that issue, but will not surprize me as wet as we get that one day it might occur. So far, the slugs been nill, the beetles some but not managable...
Wish I could say same for the tide! Well actually its not a tide, its just we pond up when it rains here. More like flooding..
That's why I grow my potatoes above ground, bad drainage.
I been seriously thinking trying rice. LOL!
I just discovered Sluggo for slugs and snails (we have a bad snail problem here even though it's hot and dry). It is OMRI approved and really works.
It was an excellent potato year here. I raised a few Yukon Gold, Red Lasoda[big things!], and mostly Kennebecs.
I only plant potatoes in raised amended beds that are sandy, peaty, good topsoil, and therefore loose. Fingerlings are great too. Russets are usually only fair here.
I plant in shallow trenches with some kind of fertilizer an inch deeper. Then I hill the dirt back in from early on. i see no need to plant earlier than mid April here.
Well, here we get extremes with the water. Spring rains I get ponding water (my "floods" and then there is the extreme from adverse conditions, so then the garden is overly wet and once we dry up, then its dry dry. But depends on the year so Mid march seems to yeild the best load! From a small patch 8-10 rows I will yeild around 600 plus llbs of nice taters good size on a good year. thats a nice load to give to the food pantries without killing myself doing it and the other gardening here.
Right now the wet season is back.. so if we do not get fall tilliage done, we are screwed for planting in mid march.
Its all dodge the water here which is impossible to do some years.
I tried potatos when I lived in North Dakota - the supplier was out of what I ordered, and sent me something else instead. They ended up being the best potatos I've ever had, and I don't know what they were. I think I ordered Onaka?, so something similar to Onaka? I grew a couple of potatos here just so the kids would know where potatos come from - but Pueblo West doesn't have the best soil and weather for potatos.
-Pat
Calalily,
I, too, have had a problem with slugs and pillbugs in my container gardening, most attacking the plants cause they're drawn to my homemade compost (which is a smorgasbord to them, 'cause they eat the detritis). This year, I'm armed with my Sluggo Plus, and I also have found it to be a VERY great product!
Am considering putting down some potatoes for the 1st time, maybe this weekend. I'm strictly a container gardener with only two raised beds. All else grows in homemade colander eBuckets (24) or patented EBs (9). I'd like to get a large container or those grow bags 25 gallon to start my potatoes.
Can somebody refresh my memory on what those bags are called? I think they're some kinda breatheable burlap fabric or something.
Thanks!
Linda
Greenhouse Gal I had the same problem that you did. I sprayed rotonone which worked well, but I was worried about beneficial insects. I then used a BT product that only kill the larvae of the beetle. I squashed all the adults. Then I found out that one of my best friends in the potato row is a bug called the soldier bug. I've finally gotten to the point that if I get to the potatoes just as the first adults do I can go around and squish a few and leave the any eggs for the soldier bugs to clean up. I don't believe that this could be done with a huge potato garden. Remember get to those bugs early before they get a foothold. I know some people are put off by hand squishing. I knew a person that would run around with a small can of gasoline and push the bugs with a stick until they fell in. I still squish, hands are washable. Good luck
I just set up my potato bed for next year. All I should have to do is pop the seed potatoes in and lay on the straw. In theory.
I'd like to have a raised bed just for potatoes but don't wish to risk disease taking hold using the same bed every year.
A fella I knew used to take planks and make a raised bed. He would just pound some stakes in the ground and affix the planks with a single nail at each ground anchir, then fill it with dirt and straw after planting the taters. At harvet, he would just knock the planks down and whalah, potatoes.
Personally I cant see much difference in whether the bed is raised or the soil ontop of them is about 6-8 inches deep/
What makes or breaks my crop is that if I do not get it in when the gorund is cold and damp, then they do not produce as well. We alway try to plant mid to late March. Any later than that the ground is to warm or something and the yeild goes down.
In my case, the problem is poor drainage. My soil is usually too muddy in the spring to till or plant, and the potatoes rot unless I have a raised bed or trenches for drainage.
Well we flood so I can sympathize.
I have yet though to put the taters in raised beds or use the frame bed like I just described.
We just furrow them in and wht comes comes!
I planted potatoes for the first time this year and what fun! I had intended to do a comparision of Kennebec and Yukon Gold but racoons in the barn got into my bags and mixed them all up. They were good anyway. The other critter problem I had was in my sweet potatoes. Imagine my surprise when digging up my gorgeous huge sweet potatoes that something had tunneled underground and had eaten them from beneath. Was it voles? What can I do to prevent this?
Hollybees,
So you grew the Yukons and the Kennebecs but couldn't tell them apart? I'm growing both in a few days. I just got my seed potatoes, and I'l lettign them sprout first before I plant out into my 20 gallon SmartPots.
Did you get a decent harvest? Any growing tips would be welcomed!
yukon golds have yellow flesh, the other kennebecs has white. One is a little earlier finish if you planted them at the same time.
you probably have moles.
To get rid of them you need to get rid of their food source which is grubs. I recommend Milk Spore. Its a natatual critter ridder!
Mice will eat the potatoes as well as other bugs.
Linda, according to my planting guide, Kennebec and Yukon are both late season taters.
I believe the Kennebec and Yukon gold did equally well. The critters I had did not disturb these only the sweet potatoes in the next row. As for the potatoes I added some peat and mixed it into the soil with some natural fertilizer from "gardens alive". The holes looked to be too small for moles and the bites looked like teeth marks not insects. The only difference I made in planting was to cover the sweet potatoes with a floating row cover near frost and I am wondering if this made a nice warm habitat that may have attracted voles or mice. Do mice tunnel?
Another tip for potatoes! I found our local garden center carried varieties suitable to our area, I could pick thru the bins for the choicest ones and and it was cheaper than paying for shipping. Of course I still love looking thru the mail order catalogs and reading about the different varieties.
My planting guide says if you want consecutive potatoes.. go with like yokons, pontiacs and kennebecs. Plant them all at the same time and harvest at three different times for an early, mid and late season.
Although its been my experience they have been known to quit at the same time if planted at the same time as growing conditions willl mess with their spuddy lil brains! LOL!
A potato catalog that I order from recommends "green sprouting" potatoes. As soon as you get the potatoes put them in shallow boxes in front of a sunny window. Over time you'll get green sprouts that look like tiny potato leaves as they get bigger. When you put them in the ground they just take off especially if the sprout has grown tall enough to let it stick through the dirt. My garden does not have great drainage so this way my potatoes can grow indoors while I'm waiting for my garden to dry. No watering is necessary as the potatoes have enough moisture inside of them for the few weeks that they are sprouting. If I buy potatoes locally I look for ones that have sprouted and take them home to let those sprouts turn green. I think by "green sprouting" the potatoes they have less of a chance of rotting in the ground because they've had a head start.
depends the sprouts might frost!
Bought organic potatoes at the Farmer's Market a couple weeks ago - Yukon Gold, Red Pontiac and Purple Majesty. All grow well here. They currently have sprouted and will get cut and planted by the weekend.
This will be my first time growing potatoes here, so will see how it goes☺
Kelly,
Are you planting in the ground or containers? I've got two 20-gallon Smart Pots.
according to my planting guide, Kennebec and Yukon are both late season taters
Yukon Gold are 70-90 days - I would say that makes them early taters.
Kennebecs don't grow so well here. They are larger taters and I think are considered mid to late season (over 100 days). There is a lot of conflicting info on days to maturity for taters IMHO so I try to glean info from the locals as to what grows well here. My parents grow Kennebecs, but they live in Maine and that particular potato rocks in their growing environment...
Different conditions of course will affect that. We don't plan to grow ours so much to store as we do for fresh eatin', especially new potatoes - yummy!
Thanks, Kell!
Farmers Seed and Nursery states Yukon Gold and Pontiacs as early.
Red Norland is also an early tater
Kennebec is a late variety.
We try to get our taters in the ground for 3/17 in our zone. The ground is nice and cold and wet and usually the best time, although we have issues with flooding so we can be too wet but have found by putting in the Yukon Gold, the pontiacs and the kenebecs we generally will have a three tier crop of good taters with the golds as early, the pontiacs coming mid season and the kennys later if all planted at the same time. Norlands are good too.
Have had mixed ersults with green sprouted taters.. as said earliier the sprouts can frost so it could work as energy spent to quickly in some regions.
All just depends on the growing season. Gardening is always chance.
