Was just going to ask what you mean by wide-row planting. :) I assumed in my first post that you were talking about exactly what you now describe - Wide-row gardening, a defined method that is very popular with those of us with large in-ground beds. It is a BIG acreage garden method of growing not normally associated with raised beds or small backyard gardens although I'm sure some try it. Normally that means 4' wide slightly raised mounds of soil 50-100' long (depending on the crop) and the plants are stagger or scatter planted in a wide band the entire width of the wide-row. Planted all over that bed, not in rows - if you follow me. Double row planting is something else entirely. So as I said above, potatoes are not usually considered a wide-row crop because of the difficulty with hilling and harvesting. I'm not saying it can't be done. You can always heavily mulch the whole 4' wide row. Or you could plant 2 defined rows along the outside edges in a 4' wide-row and hill both from the center but that wouldn't be wide-row gardening. Or you could trench them in and don't worry about hilling (depending on the variety) but then you are also losing the advantages of wide-row gardening Hope this clarifies. Dave Here is a link that might be useful: Wide row gardening images

I'm happy enough, though the only yardstick I have is what happened last year. Last year I planted grocery store bag russet potatoes, had erratic germination and harvested in late July or early August. I got 6 pounds of potatoes from about 25 square feet. This year I got 16 pounds from slightly less area. Plus this year I have enough time left in the season to plant beets and turnips and get another crop out of the same space. Space is a big deal for me, as my total garden is only about 250 square feet. The tops of the plants no longer had what looked like new growth to me. The leaves had turned dry and brown on the ends and the growing points no longer looked to be growing. I'm not sure they were done. I'm not totally sure what "done" potatoes look like. The plants had 15 pounds of good sized eating potatoes and a pound of what I call "tater tots" or "tiny taters". They range in size from a large pea up to a big marble. I'm eating those right now as I type. Last year I got a lot of those off the russets too, and those plants had all fallen down and turned yellow (though on the other hand, the russets were being heavily shaded by corn - I picked them because I figured they were done and even if not, their access to sunlight was ended). So would these tiny taters have matured into full sized tubers if I'd left them in the ground for another month or two? In Jim and Lois Hole's book, they give a very rough guideline of expected yield in kg/m^2 - 105 for irish potatoes. Now if my conversion is correct, it comes out to be 4.4 in lb/ft^2. So by their expectations, you'd get around 100 pounds of potatoes in the area I got 16. Now my "common sense" check tells me that maybe 30-50 pounds of potatoes could have come out of 20ish square feet under optimal conditions (and 105 kg/m^2 wasn't optimal, but "good"), but no way was 100 pounds coming out of there. At least not without some big secret I'm not privy too.

No, you do not "have to" hill potatoes, and planting the seed potatoes deeply is a different way of achieving the same goal. However, planting deep only works if you have well-drained soil. If someone plants too deeply in soil that is cold and holds moisture too long, there is a very real risk that the seed potatoes will rot before they sprout. I usually plant my seed potatoes 8" deep but only put a couple of inches of soil on top of the seed potatoes and leave the rest of the soil sitting beside the hole. As the plant emerges from the soil, I rake more soil into the holes and fill the holes in over time. That way I can keep an eye on the potatoes and know they are growing, rather than planting them 8" down and then wondering for a month or more if they ever are going to emerge from the soil. I think you should do whatever works for you in the conditions you have. If you get good harvests from planting deeply, why change? However, be really careful in an extra-wet year unless you have soil that drains incredibly fast. Potatoes planted that deeply in cold, perpetually wet soil struggle to survive. You know how potatoes grow, right? You plant the seed piece and stolons grow upwards and outwards and roots grow downwards. Eventually, tubers will form on the parts of the stolons that are underneath the soil. Sometimes, as the tubers (which are your potatoes) enlarge, they break through the surface of the soil and sunlight hits them. Wherever the skin of your potatoes is hit by sunlight, solanine (a poisonous substance) develops, your potato skin takes on a greenish tinge and the potatoes develop a bitter flavor. Hilling or mounding soil around the base of the plant before potatoes bust up out of the ground prevents the sunlight from reaching the potatoes and turning them green. Because I generally grow potatoes in raised beds, I plant deeply instead of hilling. Normally, you'll get potatoes forming along roughly 6-8" of underground stolon. Sometimes, though, they'll form a little higher. I don't like hilling in raised beds. First, it just looks silly. Secondly, wind and rain erosion can wash down or blow away your hills. So, I plant deeply and then, around the time that the tubers start forming, I pile on the mulch thickly. The mulch, if applied thickly and packed down, keeps sunlight from reaching the tubers and turning them green. Some people believe that you can keep hilling indefinitely and more potatoes form along the stolon. However, I don't know anyone who ever has been able to produce tubers in our climate along more than 8-10" of stolon, even if they piled on another foot of soil as a hill or a foot of mulch. Heat does impact the plants' ability to form tubers, so here in OK, no matter how deeply we plant or how high up we hill or mulch, there's only so many potatoes the plants have time to form before it gets too hot for tubers to set and size. Do what works. I've tried growing potatoes every which way and my favorite way is deep planting with mulching later in the season instead of hilling. In a really wet year, though, I'll plant more shallowly and hill because if I plant deeply, the seed potatoes rot.

I am going to take your word for it, that your Amana top loader is level and equal weighted on all four feet. I am about to purchase a Speed Queen front load washer/dryer pair. According to other owners, that washer does not spend 1/2 hour trying to decide if it is balanced or not, doing nothing. I read about many washers that annoy their owners doing this. With the Speed Queen front loaders, you can expect the load to be completed when you come back in 45 minutes. I saw the Speed Queen cut-away showing the 4 automotive sized shock absorbers and I knew that balance problems would not be an issue. The washer itself weighs a good 50 lbs more than most other washers (250 lbs). With the standard warranty being 3/5 years, that is quite a bit longer than most residential washers. I got a good deal. Washer + Dryer + 2 -10" pedestals for under $2100. Speed Queen is supposed to be the old Maytag regarding appliance longevity. I chuckle a bit whenever I hear someone say you have pay Miele money to buy a commercial washer.