Potato harvest 2023

[bower]

They're all at my place. Hawks eye view.
Now if I was a vole, I would definitely see that row as a place for a rampage!

[JRinPA]

Yeah I'd feel pretty safe under those weeds. I saw one today, a vole that is, from the kitchen window, down behind the pole beans. I better check the drip line there, it is getting pretty dry again and they may have tapped it. I did learn my less a few years back and haven't grown any root crops in that area ever since. They destroyed beets, sweets, and turnips that year.

[Amateurinawe]

Last year I let a few of the older root and veg plants go to seed. I sat outside on one day with a forest vole totally oblivious of me until I was a couple of foot away when it was aware and kept a respectful distance away but not in the least bit phased. I did find half a vole a short time after, I suspect the neighbours cat.

[JayneR13]

My compliments on your harvest! I have serious potato envy. I also dug mine in July, due to brown leaf spot. The plants were dying back and the copper fungicide couldn't save them, so I dug while I still had something worth digging. I got a whopping 10 lbs. I planted 20

[JRinPA]

Yowch. I have not had any diseases to speak of with potatoes. I plant about every 1 foot or so with little ones, usually less than 2" potato, so I guess it is about a 1.5 lb return per potato. I'm more interested about the production per area than per seed or seed weight. These first two rows were larger potatoes than they get in a shared spot.

Last night I started digging the hill that was under the 1st corn block, only about 10 feet long but I put three rows in a two layer hill. It was looking good but got too dark.

[JayneR13]

I believe my problem this year to be unfinished compost. I had to dig a strawberry bed due to Phytophthora leather rot and therefore moved the strawberries. I had to purchase a minimum order of garden soil and had more than enough to refill this bed. The weed seeds alone told me that I'd been given unfinished stock. Rest assured I'll never purchase from that source again! That soil went into 6 beds and several containers though.

The plan for the beds is to amend, amend, amend. I've planted beans and peas in three of the six beds. The others are planted with other things right now. I'll take what I get, then turn the greens into the bed. Since there's no guarantee I'd get any better from another vendor, and the thought of moving all of that soil again makes my back ache, improvement seems the best option. Chemical fertilizers will help. Organic matter and some lasagna gardening will also help.

I generally plant similarly to you: 1 small seed potato every 1' or so. This year I also got fooled by an early spring followed by two weeks of hard freeze, so ended up buying more seed due to rot in the beds. Therefore the beds were a bit overcrowded, which I'm sure didn't help matters. And the seed I bought, which was resistant to several common diseases, seems to have been susceptible to brown leaf spot. All in all, it's just been a bad potato year for me! Other stuff is producing nicely, most notably my tomatoes, and that's a good thing. Bad years happen. If I can't have potatoes this year, at least I can have knowledge and experience. LOL

[JRinPA]

I am fortunate to have avoided ever buying compost. They buy spent mushroom soil at the comm garden but I don't use very much. I can't recall ever buying any myself, even when it was $20 a scoop. I can get 5 year yard waste compost by the pickup truck bed, but that is only one month a year and limited timing for them to load it. And sometimes it has a lot of junk in it. Gloves, plastic, the still reigning champ being a small briggs muffler. Sometimes rocks too, that much worse and annoying, honestly, the loader scraping too much bottom over the years. Mostly I prefer the compost directly from the piles I maintain, and mine at home has a lot fish in it. Seeds do slip through my compost, but it seems to work well enough. At least they are the same weed seeds already present, and not new ones. Some of my compost goes truly hot, but much of it is turned by redworms or black soldier fly larvae. They are hot and heavy in July -October just outside the hot zone.

Question, do you have decent soil under the beds? Can you plant deep roots like parsnip or daikon or some of those monster sized beets to help your soil? Probably daikon, at this time of year. Last July I did daikon and lima beans as a cover crop in an unused comm garden bed. If nothing else it was going to be a potato patch this year - daikon overwintered into potatoes is hard to beat, from what I'd read. I didn't harvest any, just a few I guess. Nor was it rototilled after, they were planted to just rot in place and renew the soil. That plot ended up being split between a new comm gardener and a sweet corn patch. The sweet corn is just starting to drop pollen and is stocky and thick, looks wonderful. And the new guys stuff is doing well too.

I say get some daikon in as an overwinter, unless it is too cold there for it to work? Maybe under a frost blanket, even.

[JayneR13]

No, the soil under my beds is largely clay and nearly impossible to grow much in. That's why I put in the raised beds. I have a small urban lot so my compost bin is small. The city requires compost be in an enclosure of some kind and the subzero winters rather slow the process down. My plan is to turn the legumes under in another month perhaps, so they have a good month or more to begin the composting process. My city does give free compost, but it's famous for the "extras" in it. One year the community garden I oversee used it, and we had everything you mentioned in it and more. Our reigning champ was a plastic doll's head. Knowing that I send my diseased leaves to the city pile, I would never use it! Their pile might be hot enough to kill most of it but I have my doubts. I sent the Phytophthora bed soil there and that's one nasty bug! Nearly impossible to kill, from all I've read.

Daikon followed by potatoes is an interesting thought. I'll keep that in mind. I hate to grow potatoes at my plot because I've seen two legged varmint sign there, so I prefer to grow things like squash that the varmints don't like. I know the coordinator was negotiating for better compost with a local organization but she's left the job so I don't know what ever came of that. I was spreading chicken poo with a cup and a rake this past Spring.