Joined: 10/20/2008
Posts: 177
|
http://www.durgan.org/URL/?AGRMZ Staking POTATOES
Quote To get the potato plants to grow longer, therefore harvesting
more potatoes per square foot, try this. Get four bamboo stakes or
anything that will double as bamboo stakes, and place them evenly
around the potato plant. Then get some strong string and wrap it around
the plants at just about the middle of the plant.
As the plants grow secure more string around the new growth (when you
hill them is a good time). The staked potato plants will grow longer
than un-staked plants because hormones are produced when the plants
fall over as a signal to stop producing tubers. Staking the plants
tricks them into growing longer and producing more potatoes per square
foot. Unquote
What do potato growers think of this article?
|
Joined: 10/20/2008
Posts: 177
|
Staking is easy and simple to implement.
The author's surmise might have more validity, if some science backed
up the statement, that when a potato plant falls over tuber growth is
inhibited. It may be simply, that vegetation has less access to
sunlight.
Closely studying the growth of a potato plant, it as been observed that
there are probably larger and more new tubers if there is prolific
vegetation. This is just an observation without any controlled
experimentation.
I will experiment in 2010 to determines if there is any significant
difference between staked and not-staked. Then it will be necessary to
determine the cause. Meaning more vegetation being exposed, or
something more esoteric like hormone generation from vegetation falling
over shutting down further growth. The second part is probably
impossible to verify in a home garden.
Excessive hilling also hides vegetation from exposure to sunlight. But
the myth that new tubers grow along the stem of a potato plant has been
propagated so often that it is almost universally accepted a being a
fact.
|
