potatoes

How does one know when potatoes are ready to be dug?

I poke around when they start flowering. There should be a crop of new potatoes at this point. You can wait 'til the vines start to die down for the remainder. Those will store better. Some folks deflower plants to increase energy into spud production. I had not grown potatoes in years but have a small patch of twenty red spud plants this year. I plant my seed in more shallow trenches than suggested and raise two levels of 2"x6" around the bed. Then I keep adding layers of the abundant leaf mulch surrounding the garden. Makes robbing the vines for early spuds easy.

MPL, that sounds like a good way to do it.

I figured out a little trick about growing potatoes this year, and it's working real well. In past years I've always bought big seed potatoes then cut them into pieces with a couple of eyes on each piece. Then I've followed every instruction I've ever read and left the pieces out to dry those cuts for a few days, then planted my potatoes.

Every year I've done this I've had some potatoes fail to sprout, and digging into those spots I've found the cut seed potatoes had rotted in the ground. I'd have a few sickly-looking plants too, which upon digging were found to be growing from seed potatoes that were partly rotted. We get a lot of rain here in springtime, and that combined with those cut surfaces being in contact with the microorganisms in my compost-rich soil caused problems. So, this year I did it different.

I reasoned that seed potatoes are priced by the pound anyway (29 cents per lb. for Red Pontiacs at our local market), so it's no more expensive to buy small potatoes that don't need to be cut up. I picked through the bin and bought seed potatoes that were golf ball size, planted them whole without cutting, and every one of them came up and made the healthiest-looking potato plants I've ever grown. A practice I'm going to remember and continue!

Commercial seed potatoes are generally treated. Untreated are notorious for carrying diseaes that can effect a multitude of future related crops. I'm sure Farmetdill knows more about this than I. That said, I had a bag of costly organic potatoes and since they are not treated to deter sprouting, I was growing a potato patch in the refrigerator. I don't know the vatiety and probably won't grow potatoes next year. It was mostly for the children in the family to experience the magic of reaching under the leaves and finding potatoes (hopefully not a snake). I will avoid planting solanaceous vegetables such as eggplants, peppers and tomatoes, in that area next year.

Edied to add your plants look great. Share photos of the harvest please.

This message was edited May 27, 2015 8:07 AM