Increasing potato yeild

[pcourterelle]

Hi all...for the past three years I've planted potatos and each year I had lots of plant/greenery but very few spuds. Typically the greenery will be up to 1 meter high and spread out over a 1 metre radius but yeild only one giant spud and a three or four smaller spuds per plant. The soil is great and I add compost and steer manure every spring. I mound up around each plant. The spuds and rest of the veggie garden get a dose of liquid fertilizer every two weeks. I've planted late maturing Burbank Russets. I am in North America, Zone 4. I am considering trimming back the plants (as it encroages other areas of the garden). Any advice you could provide would be appreciated?

Thanks

ps Any good treatments to prevent potato scabs?

[TQ]

Back off the fertilizer bext year.

[belly]

On Wed, 18 Aug 2004 18:53:20 GMT in , pcourterelle graced the world with this thought:

Plant more potatoes?

[simy1]

scab is prevented by lowering the pH. Potato yield is increased by high phosphorous. So why not try to add rock phosphate next year, which will do both? and the way the plants have developed, it sounds like your garden (or the way you fertilize) is very N-rich. So just the rock phosphate next year, perhaps a bit of sulphur to further lower the pH, and nothing else, and see how it goes.

[pcourterelle]

Thanks for the advice...

pc

[pcourterelle]

in article [e-mail], simy1 at [e-mail] wrote on 8/18/04 7:00 PM:

Is there a quick/easy test to determine the ph level?

cheers pc

[simy1]

there are kits you can buy. they are not very accurate but they should give you the pH within 0.5. Or you can look at the type of weeds that come up in your garden. If you have dock, sheep sorrel, the clover-looking sorrel (sorry, can't remember its name), nutsedge, dandelion, those are all acid soil indicators, specially the first two.

[Dwayne]

I got that kind of potato crop the first coupld of time I tried to grow them. Then I read a book that told me that I had to hill the dirt up from the potato set. I had just planted about 100 feet of potatoes before reading that chapter in the book. The next day I went out and dug them all up and replanted them the right way. I had put them in raised rows, with the cuttings in the top of the mound. That year I enjoyed my first potato crop of more than one per plant.

Dwayne

[Al Laudel]

I tried it this way, first I bought one of those plastic 22" dia, deep pots. I then put in a little dirt, then a six potato eyes then some dirt to cover, as they grew I added dirt over the plant and repeated that until the pot was full. The next year I dug in and found small spuds growing all along the root from the plant growing above the dirt. I am just playing with this, won't plant spuds next year.

Al