Tag Archives: Potato tower

Potatopalooza

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It’s been a busy summer with regards to spuds, running multiple growing/storing experiments at two sites. I’ve been trying to do a number of things with them:

  • Establish a continuous supply of seed potatoes
  • Have spare potatoes on hand to consume
  • Figure out how best to store them in all seasons
  • Get them established from true seed
  • Find the best grow media and weather strategies

True Seed

I bought 200 seeds online last spring, and have had decent luck getting them to grow. Maybe half germinate, then maybe 75% make it to the mature plant stage. I’ve found the plants to grow very slowly in early spring, then take off and get exceedingly leggy like tomato vines. These vines grow well all summer until the really hot weather arrives, then they die back.  They seem to do well in the partial shade, sitting on the cool cement pad. Any more sun or being elevated kills them.  They do make 1″ tubers, I have groups of these drying in the root cellar and also dormant in pots. This will be the first crop of TPS spuds, I’m hoping to get them through the winter for early spring planting. These are whites, versus the reds I’ve grown so far.  I’m really hoping to get a spring crop out of these, if they will store. I may need to fridge them in dirt.

Grocery Store clones

These have done the best so far. I started with a handful of sprouting reds, planting them in crap soil (mostly clay)  as a lark. This crop came up last fall, went dormant, then came up again strong in late spring. I learned a few things from that:

  • Mulch the soil. Yeah I read this a million times, but it really is vital. You have to have loose soil with plenty of organic material for the tuber to grow into. Regular dirt works but doesn’t give them enough room to take off.
  • Mounding is overrated. I haven’t been able to do the potato tower thing at all, I get no tubers above where they first really grew foliage. Maybe it’s the pots, I have a new crop coming up now in good ‘ol black humus and we will see how that goes. I’ll mound those up and see what happens.
  • Dug potatoes only store in the cold. I had a couple of batches in the 68 degree cellar, the only lasted 5-6 weeks before they sprouted. These were dug in late July, versus some I had that went 4-5 months outside in pots during the winter. I kinda knew this but tried to cheat nature. They did, however, do quite well as seed potatoes and are shooting up in the new patch.
  • Hot weather is nearly as deadly as cold.  The potted plants hate the hot, I got a lot of die back in the summer vs the spring/fall. The ground plants handled it much better, which stands to reason but it’s interesting.
  • Reds are more robust than whites. Must be the climate, but so far they have been way better. I have different varieties of whites and they are all lacking.
  • Homegrown taste way better than store bought.  I have a hard time eating anything but my own now, there’s just no comparison.  This is a great excuse to grow potatoes, the ends justifies the small effort involved. I made mashed and roasted from the extra reds I got in July, OMG they were good.

Potato late fall update

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It’s been a while since I posted, busy at work/home but I’ve had a bunch of little things percolating in the background. The main focus has been potatoes, the goal was to try out growing them in a pot with the option to add height/dirt to maximize the yield.  I initially bought potato seeds, these germinated but have all died over time. I first tried in the spring, the plants came up but wilted from the heat and/or got fungus. I tried again later in the summer, with the pots in the shade such that only got morning sun. This seemed to work OK, the plants grew slowly and then took off like mad when the fall rains and cooler temps came:

IMG_1706

Sadly, the advent of evening 40s killed both of the plants. It could be the variety, but they only do well in a very narrow temperature and humidity window and with a limited amount of light.

As a lark, I tossed a bunch of small red grocery store spuds into a big pot at home, and in a the plot at work. This was a big success, as seen here:

IMG_1763

There are three plants in the leftmost pot, all thriving. I wheel them out during the day or whenever the temps are above 50. The work plants have died back, we got an unexpected frost and that nipped the foliage pretty good. They may come back in the spring, but just in case I’ll sow another row 6-8″ deep so they overwinter.   You can’t see it very well, but there’s a section of lawn edging bent into a circle above the pot rim. This was my way of quickly adding height, I’m stopping at one section just to see how it works.  If I’m lucky, I’ll get new potatoes in January.

This is a new crop for me, so I had no idea how they grew here and what to do. I have a much better understanding now, not complete but getting some basic competence.