Tell me what I am doing wrong growing potatoes?

[Gary350]

In the past I have had very bad luck growing potatoes in TN. Potatoes grow but they are very small marble size up to pink pong ball size when grown in rows. I am going to try 1 more time.

My best potato crops have been grown in old tires. I keep adding soil as the plants grow taller. I can add another tire and more soil when plants are taller. I can dump in 5 gallon of water and the tire holds all the water like a pond. Potatoes are larger but it is rare to get one larger than 2" diameter.

I have noticed the RED potatos grow best 2" diameter with lots of small marble size potatoes. Russet potatoes are golf ball size plus marble size potatoes. Kennybecks grow golf ball and marble size. Idaho potatos grow all marble size potatoes.

We typically have 3+ months of none stop rain in the spring. Last frost is about April 1st. I try to plant potatoes by April 1st if I can sometimes I poke potatos down in the mud if it won't stop raining for 1 day. In 2 or 3 weeks climate changed from 50 deg at night, 75 in the day, and rain to 80 at night, 100 in the day and no rain. It stops raining about first week of June then we have about 7 weeks of 100 degree weather starting last week of June with no rain and desert like conditions until 3rd week of August. My potato plants get full sun from sun up to about 5 pm.

I have tried mixing in compost, peat moss, and fertilizer in the soil but that never seems to help. What I read says, NO Lime and very little nitrogen.

My 6" of soil has lots of organic material. Below the soil 6" down is solid clay. The garden and yard holds water like a swamp every time it rains there is 2" of water standing on the surface but it will be gone 8 hours after it stops raining.

I want to plant 1 row of potatoes this spring. Maybe I should buy a variety of potatoes and likes this crazy climate. RED potatoes are my favorite.

I can dig up a 20 ft row and get a gallon of marble size potatoes and a dozen 2" potatoes. If all those marbles would grow 2" I would have a bushel basket of potatoes. I even plant North South rows research shows that will produce better crops. When I lived in Michigan and Illinois I had NO trouble growing potatoes summers were much cooler and spring was not a flash flood every day.

One year I planted potatoes late fall. I covered a 20 ft row with 8" of soil and about 6" to 8" of pine needles. No plants every grew it turned cold with 3 weeks of 17 deg weather before Christmas. I dug up about 2 gallons of pink pong ball size potatoes 7 months later. There was not many marble size potatoes.

I am trying to decide what I am doing wrong?

Why do I get so many marble size potatoes?

[DeborahL]

At least you haven't lost your marbles !

[ruggr10]

It must be that the soil is too tough for the tater plants. I would go no dig. There's a great youtube video I already posted on here. That's why growing them in tire towers worked for you.

[jal_ut]

Plant your taters mid March. You can plant them 2 weeks before your last (av) frost date. Plant them 3 inches deep. Cut the seed potatoes to two eyes per piece. Plant them 12 to 15 inches apart. Full Sunshine. To heck with whoever said not much nitrogen. Give them a good shot of nitrogen. When the plants are about 10 inches tall, hill them or put a deep mulch on them. The reason for the hilling is to make sure the developing tubers do not swell and come up into the light. You only need to hill them once, two inches of soil, or mulch. If the tubers get too much light they go green and taste awful. I agree, the reds are best. Sounds like you don't need to worry much about watering them, but if you do have a dry spell, try to keep them damp. Watch for insect damage. If you see any, best take action. Good Luck!

[ruggr10]

Green potatoes can also be toxic....don't eat 'em.

[digitS']

Your conditions are quite different than mine. Drainage sounds like it is very important in your soil. I don't have any problem with drainage, at all. So, I can only think that you will need to work on that.

I want to reinforce what JAL says. You shouldn't use manure (especially if it is not very well-composted) in your potatoes and this is where this nitrogen idea may come from. Potatoes are quite heavy nitrogen feeders, the horticulturalists tell us. However, scab can be a problem with using manure.

I make compost especially for use in the potato patch. The soil is quite fertile before I ever put the seed potatoes in the ground. The compost is for hilling, later in the season. When it looks as tho' the plants are, or will soon be, forming tubers - I put down some organic fertilizer and cover that with compost. If I didn't have compost, I'd use soil - by the shovel full and that fertilizer makes an important difference.

There are varieties that should be more specifically suited to your area. I think that your local cooperative extension office should be able to give you some ideas there. By the way, Idaho potatoes are what some folks call Russet Burbanks. You may have just been growing the same variety in 2 different places.

Buying certified seed potatoes is safest for reasons of disease. Also, soopermarket spuds have been treated to retard sprouting. This is especially true with those that are available in late winter. The treatment began before those potatoes were even harvested! The plants were sprayed in the field. They probably were sprayed twice - once to inhibit later sprouting in the tubers and a few days later, to kill the plants.

Steve

[Bobberman]

The problem with potatoes is everyone tries to grow them with rich nitrogen soil! Big mstake. Nice leaves with little potatoes! Try a bad soil with little fertilizer even sawdust or just brown leaves for cover! Put stuff that grows roots like potash not nitrogen!

[GardenRN]

Maybe if drainage is such a problem you could try growing some in containers? Maybe some of your larger potatoes are rotting because of the moisture. Containers would let you get a good, well drained soil deeper than in your yard. Since you said you have solid clay just 6" down, get cat litter buckets or 5 gallon buckets with good soil and drainage holes.

Just an idea.

[applestar]

I'm definitely not an expert, but being me, I'll voice my thoughts.

I also have hardpan clay soil few inches below so I tend to have more success with raised beds. My chicken wire circle potato tower experiment was a great success, but if you have the room, you might also consider HAY (not straw) bale raised bed (IME most of the weed seeds in hay bales end up fermenting and dying, but you can also do the flip the bales over until all sprouted weeds are dead trick first). I mulched the tower potatoes with a lot of the spoiled hay and allocated a good portion of the more nitrogen-rich alfalfa mix hay, though most of it was the less expensive orchard and clover mix hay. In my area, alfalfa and alfalfa mix hay are actually hard to come by.

Also -- how tall did your potato plants get? I was astonished when the chicken tower potato plants grew to be nearly 6 feet tall. until then, I always thought they didn't get much taller than 3feet. I also learned about fast (90 days) maturing potatoes suffering from getting their tops covered in the tower method that year -- mid to long season (100-120 days) potatoes did much better.

ALSO! Vermin -- chipmunks or field mice have found my potato patches in recent years and biggest ones were often almost gone. I didn't have crescent moon shaped leftovers as evidence, I wouldn't have known what had happened to them.

[jal_ut]

The problem with potatoes is everyone tries to grow them with rich nitrogen soil! Big mstake. Nice leaves with little potatoes! Try a bad soil with little fertilizer even sawdust or just brown leaves for cover! Put stuff that grows roots like potash not nitrogen!

Sorry Bobberman, I can't agree. I fertilize my potatoes at time of planting and again at hilling time with urea. 38% nitrogen. My soil is high in the other trace minerals, so don't need to add those. Let us always remember it takes leaves to manufacture the food for the plant to store in the tubers. No other part of the plant can do that. More leaves = more food. More food = bigger spuds.

Adding nutrients to a soil is best done after a comprehensive soil test to see what and how much is needed. However on the small scale of our home gardens, I find it hard to pay the price for a soil test, when the money may be better spent just buying fertilizer. I add leaves and manure to my garden yearly, and supplement that with some urea. In case you don't know what that is, it is a pelleted fertilizer with a 38% nitrogen content. The local co-op gets it in bulk, by the carload, for the farmers. I just take a bag and go get some. Enough soil testing has been done in this area to tell us that the trace minerals are abundant in the soil here, and all that is required is additional nitrogen. The soils vary greatly across this country, so perhaps you may find you want to pay the price for a soil test? What do farmers in your area add to their fields? There is a good clue if you are growing in natural soil.

What I suggest is some google searches on "Fertilize Potato", and I strongly recommend that you only open pages that are from Universities. These have done the testing on large plots, and their answers are closer to the truth than you are apt to find elsewhere. If you open other pages found in those type of searches, you often get some comment made in a forum, and as can be clearly seen here in this thread, there is no consensus of opinion on the answer to the ops question. Ask 8 people and get eight different answers. All of which are an opinion with little or no scientific fact to back it up. I can tell you how I grow some decent sized spuds in my garden, but you will have to work it out for yourself in your garden. Good Luck.

[Bobberman]

Urea is one of my favorite fertilizers and I will see how it works for me! Maybe you soil is rich in the potash and works well with the nitrogen! Also Osmocote is also urea in slow relese form but much more expensive. Urea is a very inexpensive source of nitrogen! !Thanks for the info!

[jal_ut]

Gary350, what county are you in? Many counties have extension services that have good information just for the asking. Here is a page I found for Shelby County Tn. CLICK

They do list potato as a crop for home gardens in TN. It must be possible.