Farm Potato Harvest Better Than I could Hope For

[Publius]

Started digging up the taters and just wow their bigger then most years and lots of them the two dish pans is 3/4 of one 65' foot row. Almost One row down five more to go.

http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/atta...nt.php?attachmentid=111641&stc=1&d=1409771320

 

[Hfcomms]

You must have a decent sized root cellar. I wish I had one!

 

[bbkaren]

I was pleased with ours as well. We wound up with about 60 lbs from 50 ft. of row...I guess due to our clay soil, they were knobby and some were joined together and odd-shaped. But I'm not complaining! There was one that weighed 1.5 lbs! I know it's probably not that big a deal for most gardeners, but for me it is - usually I get an armload of little golf-balls infested with wireworms so I'm thrilled!

 

[Publius]

I was pleased with ours as well. We wound up with about 60 lbs from 50 ft. of row...I guess due to our clay soil, they were knobby and some were joined together and odd-shaped. But I'm not complaining! There was one that weighed 1.5 lbs! I know it's probably not that big a deal for most gardeners, but for me it is - usually I get an armload of little golf-balls infested with wireworms so I'm thrilled!

Most years we get tennis ball sized and lots of smaller ones too but this year I'm getting many that are soft ball sized and like you we are very pleased with this years potato harvest.

 

[Publius]

You must have a decent sized root cellar. I wish I had one!

We have a good sized root cellar and you don't need to get as elaborate as I did, but a good hill side you can put in more than one smaller storage cellar's by digging into the hill side and using cement blocks stacked 4 high and make a 4'X4' compartment and cover it over with 3'Ft or more of soil. The door can be made of plywood and held in place with a few hay bales as insulation.

 

[imaginative]

Nice looking haul...I need to start digging this weekend.

When did you plant your potatos?

 

[Publius]

Nice looking haul...I need to start digging this weekend.

When did you plant your potatos?

Normally around here we plant in mid May but we kept getting rain and as many know you cannot work the soil when its wet especially clay soil, so it was early June when I got them in the ground and the vines had all died off just this past week.


Edit Add: I knew I posted about the rain and planting and found the thread and link and yes it was June 3 when I finely got them in the ground. http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/showthread.php?448588-Getting-Garden-Ready.

 

[summerthyme]

We've been digging a few at a time... were planning (Hoping!) to borrow a potato digger and dig the patch this weekend, but after 3" of rain in the past three days, and an 80% chance of rain forecast for Saturday, that isn't looking too likely.

Dunno what we're going to get for a yield yet, since the plants blighted out around the middle of August. And were planted a month later than normal, too. Sigh...

Still, I've been getting close to ten decent sized tubers from each Purple Viking and Red Pontiac plant. The Yukon Golds (which I did NOT want to plant, because they are very low yielding, but when I went to buy seed potatoes to supplement our root cellar tubers, the Kennebecs I wanted were loaded with blight and rotten- certified seed, too!) are producing 3-4 tubers per plant, but they're HUGE.

Seeing some hollow tubers, unfortunately, in the big ones. Overall, I think we'll get a decent yield and certainly will have plenty for us and some to sell, but not as much as we'd planned.

I'll update here once we finally get them out of the ground. (because of the blight, we can't/won't dig them until the soil is fairly dry. So far, there have been very few blighted tubers, which is a blessing)

Summerthyme

 

[Publius]

Yukon Gold Potatoes

Started digging the Yukon Golds today and I lost 12 feet of the last three rows of potatoes because of rain, its part of my garden that does not drain very well.
The dish pan is a large one and the size and yields are what I come to expect of the variety so this dish pan is one half of one row. I like these and so does everyone else great eating potato.

http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=111734&stc=1&d=1410015144

 

[summerthyme]

Publius- if you like the Yukon Golds, look in to Keuka Golds... almost the same potato in shape, color, eating quality- but about twice the yields. And they store SLIGHTLY shorter, which means I don't have to try to force the darned things to start sprouting when it's time to plant in the spring!

Summerthyme

 

[moldy]

I lost probably over 90% of my huge patch of pumpkins and winter squash due to excess rain. Breaks my heart!

 

[Publius]

My Tomatoes are starting to ripen and coming on like gang busters, I was beginning to think I was not going to have any this year

Publius- if you like the Yukon Golds, look in to Keuka Golds... almost the same potato in shape, color, eating quality- but about twice the yields. And they store SLIGHTLY shorter, which means I don't have to try to force the darned things to start sprouting when it's time to plant in the spring!

Summerthyme

I buy my potatoes from a local hardware store that caters to us garners and they carry limited varieties and the Kennebec's and Yukon Gold's are two they sell in bulk and its that or the Red Pontiac or some Russet potato's they carry. The Red Pontiac does not do well with the soil I have.

 

[summerthyme]

I understand the 'easy supply' issue. I got my Keuka Golds from Moose Tubers in Maine 4 years ago. Bought 5 pounds. Saved every tuber (except 5 we ate as a taste test the first fall) for seed. I should harvest 300# this year, and we ate a bunch last year.

Yukons have abysmal yields even in good soils. They've averaged 1/3 to 1/2 of other varieties for us, although we grew them for years because they were one of the first yellow fleshed varieties and we loved the flavor. I've experimented with several other yellow fleshed varieties (German Butterballs are good, but nowhere near as deeply colored... Rosegolds are beautiful, but tend to produce smaller tubers) and settled on the Keuka Gold as my main yellow fleshed variety. The only reason I've got Yukons this year is because the local supplier had blighted Kennebecs when I decided I didn't have enough saved seed potatoes in the root cellar, and the Yukons were the only other choice left.

Summerthyme

 

[littledeb]

We plant Yukons and Red Norlands for the farmers markets we sell at. Beautiful sizes this year. Usually I get to keep the small baby potatoes (dime size) because they are perfect for canning. But this year, everybody wanted the baby potatoes too.
Does anyone plant sweet potatoes and/or French fingerlings? Was going to plant sweet potatoes this year but hear they only have 1-2 potatoes per plant. Is that true? We wanted to plant the fingerlings, too, but the place I work at, sold them all when I took a weekend off. Grrr

 

[Publius]

We plant Yukons and Red Norlands for the farmers markets we sell at. Beautiful sizes this year. Usually I get to keep the small baby potatoes (dime size) because they are perfect for canning. But this year, everybody wanted the baby potatoes too.
Does anyone plant sweet potatoes and/or French fingerlings? Was going to plant sweet potatoes this year but hear they only have 1-2 potatoes per plant. Is that true? We wanted to plant the fingerlings, too, but the place I work at, sold them all when I took a weekend off. Grrr

A few friends I give potatoes to have made comments about the really small taters that are mixed in the gift and I tell them they are fancy grommet potatoes.

 

[summerthyme]

Well, we dug the potatoes Monday. Final tally was 18 bushels of perfect potatoes, and another 2 bushels of cuts/damaged. Hired kid took those home- with 11 people in his family, they can eat them before they go bad. For a blight year, it wasn't bad... normally, we'd expect around 24 up to even 30 bushels off that amount of seed potatoes, but this year sucked. We had almost 1/3 of the certified seed NOT SPROUT, which cut down the potential yield from the beginning. We were able to keep up with the weeds and got them hilled well in a timely manner, which is probably the big reason we didn't get many blighted tubers. (we did haul a 5 gallon pail of really stinky ones back to be burned, but that's a minor loss to late blight)

Onions were worse, thanks to a very late planting, poor fertilization (one bunch I planted in a raised bed made 1/2 bushel all by itself- if the others had done that well, I'd have had 15 bushels of onions!) As it was, I got 4 bushels, on top of all the sweets we've been eating fresh since early August. I got all those pulled yesterday, and once the wet spell coming tomorrow goes through, I'll spread them all out on a tarp and cure them for a few days before storing.

Littledeb... I planted fingerlings one year, and won't ever do it again. Yes, they produce a lot of tubers. But they're mostly small, and even the bigger ones are awkward buggers to peel. We didn't see any major benefit in flavor, etc over some of the nicer round tuber varieties we always plant. If you want lots of small tubers, plant your regular varieties closer together.

Summerthyme

 

[Martinhouse]

Now that I've joined TB, I can answer a question here.

Littledeb, last year I planted grocery store sweet potatoes (Walmart) and where the soil was rich, I got six and seven very large tubers from each slip. Plus lots of smaller tubers out along the roots. There were probably onlythree or four tubers on the plants in poorer soil and they weren't as large.

I did get lots of the smaller tubers along the roots, and the chickens really liked them.

I got from five to eight slips from each of the sweet potatoes that I started them from.

This year, I planted only three slips from a six-pack my sister bought. I haven't dug them yet and probably won't until after our first frost wilts the vines.

Carol

 

[Babs]

My potatoes didn't do so good this year. Gophers are tearing up my garden. Many of my potatoes were half eaten. And then one whole row had scab.

 

[Homesteader]

Publius- if you like the Yukon Golds, look in to Keuka Golds... almost the same potato in shape, color, eating quality- but about twice the yields. And they store SLIGHTLY shorter, which means I don't have to try to force the darned things to start sprouting when it's time to plant in the spring!

Summerthyme

Have you tried Yellow Finns. They are my absolute favorites. Nice buttery flavor and grow real well here in North Idaho.

 

[Homesteader]

My potatoes didn't do so good this year. Gophers are tearing up my garden. Many of my potatoes were half eaten. And then one whole row had scab.

That's a bummer. I have to watch for scab too. My potatoes like it if I plant them in a newly tilled area that hasn't been gardened before.

 

[AlaskaSue]

This was far and away my best year for spuds. Only planted 10 cuttings so just the ten plants...but I ended with 72# of beautiful! perfect potatoes. I couldn't believe how many big and medium ones off each plant...and we just kept digging and finding more. Definitely planting the same next year (in a new bed, rotate once per four years the raised beds I use). I just wish onions would grow here (globe that is, spring onions are just not the same).

 

[Babs]

That's a bummer. I have to watch for scab too. My potatoes like it if I plant them in a newly tilled area that hasn't been gardened before.

Yes, that's what I did. It was virgin ground. All I can figure is the gopher spread it from somewhere else. They eat the roots of thistles, which is a good thing, but they also stash piles of them for the winter in my garden. Uggh!!! I can't get rid of the thistles until I get rid of the gophers. I hate gophers so much!