Voles have short tails, mice have long tails.

Martin

I just dug the backyard potato patch.

This bed was 13'x36" but this year I dug it deep, laid in some fish fertilizer, and mixed in some compost with the dirt as I refilled it, then topped with compost. I swapped the log border joins to widen it and shorten it a bit. So now it is a 12'x42" bed of well broken up soil.

I had planted about 18 pieces of seed potato, down in about 6", with no further hilling. I put the corn transplants in when the potatoes were up a foot or so. The corn did really well sharing the bed. Today I just dug up 29.5 lb of Lehigh, all most all perfectly shaped. I would say that the middle of the bed produced the least. The biggest potatoes were at either end. Whether that was due to the shade, the plant space/collisions, or more water on the outside (flood/rain gutter, maybe didn't penetrate to the middle) I'm not sure. Also, no black plastic over top, and no vole damage.
I'm still trying to get a handle on what is a respectable potato yield. This was about 40 sq ft, with the outside plants falling out over the edge, and yielded about .75 lb/sq foot. Lots of space between the potatoes. I would say that all the bigger potatoes came from maybe five plants. Or that, a quarter of the plants contributed to more than half the yield. How do I get ALL twenty plants to produce like those five did? That would make a 60lb yield instead of a 30lb yield. I just found a page that says:
"Potato. Grow 1 plant to yield 5 to 10 potatoes. Yield 10 to 20 pounds per 10-foot row. Space seed potatoes 10 to 14 inches apart in trenches 24 to 34 inches apart."
So, up to 11 plants per row in that bed, with 29" between rows could squeeze in two rows, yields 1.5lb per plant = 33 lbs. That sounds fairly close to what I got, except I had more or less three broken rows, plus the corn.

JR don't forget you got two crops from that patch! I think it's a fantastic use of space, where you get 30 lb of potatoes in addition to your corn!

I found a couple that rolled into the hill when I was digging so it is probably right on at 30 lb. The corn over potatoes seems to have worked really well, but I did not space the corn nearly as tightly as usual. And probably the better for it. It was around 18 left over double seeded corn blocks in three rows, and most of the twins seemed to put out 3 good cobs between them. There were a couple of singles and at least a couple of the corn blocks were overwhelmed by the potatoes. All told we got around 3 dozen prime cobs and a dozen half cobs.

If you have the nutrition for it, it seemed to work really well, though I had never really read of it done. I've read three sisters enough times, but have never timed the beans well enough myself. It definitely needed the drip tape this year.

This is one thing I like about potatoes. Once they are dug out, it easy to put in a little more time and re-plant the area immediately. Does anyone here quickly roll beds over to next on a regular basis? What do you normally put in after them? I was going to spread peas just for nitrogen but decided for a crop.

I re-leveled that bed right before dark, pressed it firm with plywood, set seed trenches with a board I made for that, dibbled the trenches and re-planted. It may be too late in the year, but at that point it was just a little more work. I put in... I better write this down here while I can still picture it... starting upper right.
About 2-3 ft of each
Baby spinach 2 rows
Spinach, semi savoy 3 rows
Carrots. Short ones. 5 rows
Lettuce - 2 rows black seeded simpson and 3 rows romaine
Red beets - 3 rows of detroit dark red med tops, 2 rows of old red ace seed

I will cover with a hoop tunnel later on and see what comes. Many years it doesn't freeze here much until late November. First frost, usually mid-late October, and often just a day or two. But AG19 can weather that. And if my laughing in the face of winter brings an early snowstorm, well, that weather would be awesome for hunting!