Are seed potatoes really that different from regular 1s?

[Ozark Lady]

You do have to watch the oak leaves, they do tend to be acidic. If you compost them, with other items you can get back to neutral. But as a mulch, they do leech tannin, which is acidic. I use woodashes to balance this out to a certain degree.

Possibly that is how it is messing with your pond.

Plus, overfeeding the pond can lead to "bloom" and the leaves would add more food to the algae and other pond plants and could lead to this "bloom". The bloom is healthy for the fish, just not for viewing purposes.

[mrsgreenthumbs]

@ ozarklady - Well sad to say my expedition into ponding ended after I decited to stop buying Koi to feed the neighborhood possum. -sigh- I miss it and the hummer's that would buzz around eating gnats... oh well thanks for the advice about the acidity for the compost so about how much ash should be added? We only use oak wood to BBQ with and other than that... really not much burning of anything, we could always do a bon fire and burn eucalyptus I guess.

[Ozark Lady]

Not much, I sprinkle it on, like salt on food... ha ha... Just really light.
Careful, not to get it on the plant leaves, just side dress with it.
This is the content of hard wood ash:
Phosphorus content usually ranges between 0.8 and 3 per cent, potassium from 2.8 to 8.6 per cent, calcium from 14 to 28 per cent, magnesium from 0.8 to 2.8 per cent and sulfur from 0.3 to 0.5 per cent.

We heat our home with wood. So, we have it in excess!
And we rarely have to cut down a good tree, unless it is in the way, mostly storms, and dead trees simply supply all we need.

You could even burn a few leaves, carefully, in your grill, and probably use the ashes from them, and a few sticks that you find in with the leaves.

Isn't Eucalyptus an ever green? Not sure what the ash content of it would be... You have Eucalyptus?? Get a koala bear, and forget fish! ha ha

[nes]

My favourite potato link: http://lifehacker.com/5202849/grow-100-lbs-of-potatoes-in-4-square-feet

Planning on trying it out myself this year!!

[a0c8c]

Alot ogcommercial potato growers spray herbicides on the potato vines to make it easier to get the potatos out easier. The potatoes of course soak up the herbicides, making most sprouting inhibiters needless, but of course make you eat herbicides. Alot of store bought potatoes won't grow well or even sprout because of the herbicides.

[mrsgreenthumbs]

@ ozarklady - we have a LOT of eucalyptus trees here on the central coast. They grow wild out here in the hills where I work:



and they are towering over my mother's house to the point she is forced to have a shade garden. We get lot's of post's on Craigs List (my other addiction) for free cords of the stuff. Nothing like our giant red wood trees but pretty big.

[Ozark Lady]

Beautiful photo.

For some reason, I just always associate Eucalyptus with Australia and Koala bears. Too many Crocodile Hunter shows I suppose... Aww but who didn't love Steve Erwin?

Eucalyptus, cough drops... how hard is it to make something usable like that out of it... sap or leaves? Hmmm.

[cynthia_h]

The eucalyptus trees here in California are a terrible fire hazard. They act like torches/explosives during wildfires.

Just search on

eucalyptus fire

here at THG and you'll find a couple of informative threads.

The Montecito (Santa Barbara County) fire last year was an excellent/terrible example of eucalyptus making a wildfire so much worse than it would otherwise have been.

The Oakland Firestorm (October 20 and 21, 1991) was fueled largely by eucalyptus. Over 3,100 homes in Oakland and Berkeley were burnt to the ground that weekend. The fire was so hot, large, everything else that it created its own weather and wind. Wiki has an article on "Oakland firestorm." There may be a paragraph on eucalyptus.

There aren't enough koalas to eat the eucalyptus in California, and our climates aren't hospitable to koalas, anyway. I'd much rather be able to keep chickens--koalas are reputed to be mean little things--but El Cerrito doesn't allow it. My dogs could do without the fleas *or* ticks. Our tick season is mercifully short, but we do have one....coming soon.

Note: The area of California where the OP lives is not a large commercial potato-growing region. Almost every bag of potatoes I see in my produce store is from--yep--Idaho. Some are from Washington, and a few occasionally from Oregon. The only California potatoes I ever see are the specialty ones, grown on small farms: fingerlings, reds, blues. I see these spuds at farmers' markets, but since I know where the vendors are from I can say with certainty that none of them are from the central coast of California. *whew*

Cynthia H.
Sunset Zone 17, USDA Zone 9

[mrsgreenthumbs]

Well... I may have learned my lesson all ready lol. One of the 6 spuds that were looking so healthy and green and happy suddenly popped out a leaf with a big tar like black spot. Rather than hmm and haw at it I ripped it up out of there. Don't know what it was but, lesson learned now? Can it spread to any of my other plants? (onions, carrots, spinach, bell pepper's, garlic) Hopefully the other potato plants wont get it but I doubt I'v safely avoided that. Next time I plant tater's they will be from seed one's.

Oh and cynthia_h is absolutely correct the Santa Maria valley is very well known for our Strawberry fields. We are the number one producer of the tasty little red berry's. In the summer time the entire valley smells... it's heavenly like warm sweet strawberry's and sea breeze, and fertile dirt. If I could bottle that scent I'd be a very wealthy woman... but we do not grow potatoes for mass production in this area, Iv actually never seen a potato plant till I started growing my own. We do how ever grow artichoke, flowers, broccoli (ugh could those fields stink any more?), and other odds and ends. I'm sure somewhere in this valley there has to be a few garden's with tater plants but as for business wise, nope I can't think of one farm that grows the tubers.

[Ozark Lady]

My friend, and neighbor has a You-Pick-Em strawberry and blueberry farm. And it does smell great, and yet, when too many overripe berries are present... yuck... So they pick them often, whether they have customers or not.

As far as your potatoes. Potatoes are in the night shade family, as is... tomatoes, peppers, tobacco, eggplant to name a few.

So, if you suspect disease, don't plant these guys near the potatoes former home.

A disease needs a host in order to survive, and flourish.