What's the best way to maximize seed potato yield?

15 years ago

What's the best way to get the most pounds of potatoes out of a bag of seed potatoes? Should you cut the seed potatoes up into as many small pieces as you can (each with just one or two eyes) or will the over all yield be better if you minimize the cutting up of the seed potatoes and let more multi-stem plants occur? Or do multi-stem plants lead to over crowding and lower yields? Would the highest theoretical yields result if each seed potato piece had only one eye and the succeeding plant had plenty of space and nutrients all for just itself?

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Comments (4)

rockguy
15 years ago
The highest yield will be from the best soil, no matter how you cut them.
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glib
15 years ago
Not a bad answer. I have tried it both ways and saw little difference. By cutting a large or medium potato in two pieces (have at least two eyes per piece, dip the cut face in wood ash to prevent rot), you get two plants, but some halves will rot anyway and not produce, and the rest will make smaller plants. Eventually, when going to the health food store to buy my seed, I would pick only the small potatoes from the bin. No cutting, no rotting, and more seed per pound.

Given the OP high pH, he would be well advised to try wood chips or sawdust as a mulch, specifically for potatoes (answer to parallel thread). They like the organic matter, they need the mulch and the acid, and in my experience they do not mind the coarse chunks surrounding them. Long term, the soil's tilth will improve. Granted, initial productivity will not be optimal, but if you don't make your soil better it will never be.

I have grown potatoes many times under wood chips and under a pile of organic refuse from the garden (basically, last year's cabbage stumps, radicchio roots, etc, all raked to one spot). I think they grow best with a mixture of chips and other (greener) matter, at least at my site, and I can not explain why, but under a potato canopy composting greatly speeds up (possibly it is the earthworms). Collard stumps disappear in one season. Give them a bit of P and a bit of N.
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glorygrown
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glib, are you saying that you basically use half-raw compost mixed with browns to layer your potato plants?
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yardenman
15 years ago
I have my best sucess (small scale) growing my potatoes in containers. I don't mean little flowerpots, but storage containers about 2"L by 16"W x 16" tall. I put a mixture of garden soil, sand, and compost 6 inches deep and push the cut potstoes (3 eyes per piece) into the soil, and cover them. As they grow, I keep an inch or two of sprout above the soil line (adding as needed).

When they are about to the top of the container, I add aged mulch to fill.

When it is time to harvest, I just dump the containers onto a large sheet of plastic and pick out the potatoes. The soil goes back onto the compost bin or low spots in the flower bed.
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What's the best way to maximize seed potato yield?

Comments (4)

rockguy

glib

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