Growing potatoes, advice needed

[Kikiriki]

I just read that potatoes like acid soil, and produce best with it. The writer said she uses pine needles for mulching in the layers and on top and that she always gets a good harvest. Another person said the potatoes like rich loose soil. I can't remeber where I saw this: this is my first time trying potatoes and I have been looking at info all over the place...

 

[erinszoo]

If potatoes like acid soil, then you could use fertilzer that you use for azaleas and blueberries I would guess to help acidify the soil if you don't have pine needles available. I've never done that. We've always just planted in soil or soil straw mix that is loose. Some years we get great yields and other years we get hardly anything. One year we had a ton of potatoes but they all rotted in the ground. Still have no idea why. It only happened that one year. The next year we planted 5# of seed potato as an after thought and ended up with like 60# of potatoes from it. This year we are growing some in the ground, some in feeds sack bags, and others in mostly straw.

Sometimes you just have to quit reading and go for it or you'll end up confused and second guessing everything everyone says.

 

[sane cat lady]

i have heard that potato boxes and growing bags are great for yeilding potatos

 

[my sunwolf]

Where we live there is naturally more acidic soil, which is why this was tobacco country for a long time (and in some ways still is). Tobacco, tomatoes, peppers, potatoes, that nightshade family tends to do pretty well, so that may be why I have success with potatoes when I don't even do much to the soil. I do hear that, like most veggies, they like a lot of organic matter.

 

[Kikiriki]

Where we live there is naturally more acidic soil, which is why this was tobacco country for a long time (and in some ways still is). Tobacco, tomatoes, peppers, potatoes, that nightshade family tends to do pretty well, so that may be why I have success with potatoes when I don't even do much to the soil. I do hear that, like most veggies, they like a lot of organic matter.

Hmmm.... Might be why so many people seem to have bad luck: potting soil mixes are probably not going to be acidic! I have also been wondering about the timing of mounding the green tips: i saw a really sad video on youtube in which a guy and his kids are so excited to unearth their potatoes from a very tall box. The thing must have been 5 feet!! It was taller than his kids! They got one normal size potato, and one little mini, and they both were near the top of the box.

I am thinking he buried the top of the plant too often so the plant put all its available energy into growing more greens. The leaves are needed to make the energy to produce potatoes, so if it has limited energy, it will go into leaves for more energy instead of into potato production. That would be why he only had potatoes at the top: once he stopped burying them.

The people who do best seem to be the ones who kind of forget about the plant for a good month before mounding the dirt, and they always leave a nice bit of leaves showing at the top. For my first time growing experiment, I will try that: I had great top production with the buds put in at about an inch below normal ground level. I have already created about an eight inch mound, and I will not mess with them again until May 10. I am going to make myself a reminder right now!