Sowing Spuds

Article Tools

Image Gallery

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

In selecting which potatoes to plant, keep maturation dates in mind to ensure a steady harvest throughout the growing season and a storage crop as well. Jim Gerritsen of Wood Prairie Farm, Bridgewater, Maine, one of the country's largest producers of organic potatoes, recommends the following as one possible grouping that provides for harvests of great-tasting spuds from late spring to early fall:

`Caribe,' pronounced Ka-REE-bay, (early) is one of the prettiest potatoes you'll dig from your garden, with its purple skin and snow-white flesh. This variety makes excellent new potatoes, so it's hard to leave them in the ground; when allowed to mature, they grow fairly large and oblong.

`Rose Gold' (midseason) is the best of the redskinned, golden-fleshed potatoes, producing medium to heavy yields of medium-sized round tubers.

`Island Sunshine' (late), developed by organic farmers on Prince Edward Island, Canada, probably has the highest tolerance to potato late blight of any variety now being grown. The medium-sized, round tubers have gold skins and golden flesh, and the plants are heavy producers.

`Russian Banana' (fingerling; mid-to-late season) is an heirloom gourmet variety first grown by early Russian settlers. It produces a heavy set of flavorful, golden-skinned and golden-fleshed, crescent-shaped tubers with tapered ends. Their culinary qualities are considered unsurpassed.

CULTURE

'Caribe' sports purple skin and snow-white flesh.

Potatoes need at least six to eight hours of full sun a day and at least 1 inch of water per week from rain or deep watering. They will grow in any soil but prefer a light, well-drained sandy loam, high in organic matter and slightly on the acidic side.

For most vegetable crops, heavy soils can be amended with manure, but for potatoes, manure increases the chance of infection from potato scab, a disease that causes superficial reddish-brown spots on the surface of tubers. As the potatoes grow, the spots may expand and turn corky and necrotic. For a safer, alternative potato amendment, try compost and leaf mold.

Potato plants are started from small tubers called seed potatoes. Buy "certified seed stock," which is guaranteed disease-free. The best size is comparable to a hen's egg, but larger tubers can be cut into 1 1/2-to-2-inch-square pieces, each containing two to three eyes. Rest cut seed potatoes in a warm, dark place for a few days before planting, so the cuts develop calluses, which help protect the seeds from disease and rot.

To avoid those problems, Klettke prefers not to cut her seed tubers. "When you do," she says, "you open it up to disease. Besides, there is nothing wrong with planting an entire large tuber. It will send up shoots, too, and produce plenty of potatoes."

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print