Potatoes

[elkhound]

thread about growing potatoes...starting with vintage material.this is from small farmers journal reprint of
How to Grow an Acre of Potatoes
USDA BULLETIN No. 1190 Issued 1921, Revised 1924

i would caution all about section about seed disenfection and products used. i am not sure if this practice is still used.in other words you are responsible for your own actions. use caution in vintage bulletins as things do change as we gain knowledge.


https://smallfarmersjournal.com/how...e,planting an acre of potatoes is 8.6 bushels.

 

[elkhound]

Potato

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potato
lots of info to read here.

 

[elkhound]

The Average Potato Yield Per Plant
https://homeguides.sfgate.com/average-potato-yield-per-plant-48132.html

snippet

Average Yield per Potato Plant

According to Colorado State University Extension, when fertilized and watered correctly and planted in a place that receives a healthy dose of sun all day, the average yield per potato plant is about 2 pounds. Fedco Seeds notes that the average yield of potatoes per pound of planted seed potatoes is 10 pounds. If the return is less than 6 pounds of potatoes per pound of cut seeded potatoes, then it could be due to an unmonitored insect infestation or a lack of water during a critical growing period.

For the best yield, wait to plant until the last frost has passed. When the plants are 6 to 8 inches tall, add more soil to the stem of the plant in a mound. Only the top leaves should be visible above the mound. This is called "hilling," which will keep the tubers underground protected.

Continue hilling the potato plants as they grow. To do this, mound dirt around the stem when it has grown 6 to 8 more inches. This will ensure an abundant yield of potatoes when it is time to harvest. Generally, potatoes can be harvested 10 weeks after planting.

 

[elkhound]

FEDCO growing instructions

https://www.fedcoseeds.com/moose/growing_potatoes.htm

 

[Grizzleyette___Adams]

I fooled around and experimented with a pillowcase, a couple of shovelfulls of dirt, an armload of old hay and chopped and dried weeds. Plus a couple of forgotten potatoes that began to sprout in my pantry.

Yield: a sackfull of beautiful potatoes!

I threw a couple of shovelfulls of garden soil in the bottom of the pillowcase, planted the spuds, and rolled down the pillowcase to almost soil level. As the potatoes grew, I added handfulls of hay and dried weeds, rolled up the pillowcase a little past the level of hay. I repeated this process as the potatoes grew until the entire pillowcase was a little more than half-full.

When it came time to harvest, I simply rolled down the pillowcase to reveal a sack full of food! The best part: NO digging!

 

[elkhound]

looking at calories and just what it takes to produce said calories..potatoes. if a person eats 2000 calories a day its got to come from some place.2000 x 365 days =730,000 calories for a year. most hardcore people shoot for 1 million a year especially if doing hard work. so lets look at potatoes.

potatoes boiled equals 395 calories per pound. if fried and other changes it goes up in calories but its from the oils and fats etc. so just looking at potatoes alone. i pulled out my digital scale and picked out 3 pretty large potatoes to get a 1 pound reading for the 394 calories.it was a nice bunch of potatoes and got to thinking if i ate one per meal in a day for an average of 132 calories per meal from that source alone. if i eat 1500 calories a day and do anything at all i lose weight. so looking at small pile of potatoes and thinking thats only 384 calories. is much harder than one realizes or thinks producing them is.i believe people are sadly mistaken and over estimating how much they produce in small gardens.another topic for another time...

theres a wide variable to exact ways of planting potatoes from row spacing to actual seed and more.generalization.msu garden pdf for 100 foot rows says a good harvest is 1.5pounds per foot of row. i done my own experiments and found that to be close. i produced various amounts from .5 to 1.8# a foot and looked at an extra nice purple fingerlings that was well over 2# under it.

the planting by acre rules have huge variable in that i seen eastern countries that plant potatoes very close together and drop seed in row close as well. also seen farmers in turkey plant in hills spaced about 3 feet apart and use 5 or 6 whole potatoes in each hill.heres what johnny seeds says about it.
AVG. PLANTING RATE: 10 lb./80-100' at 12" spacing; 110 lb./1,000'; 1,600 lb./acre in rows 36" apart.
SEED SPECS: Avg. 8-10 pieces/lb.; fingerling type: avg. 20 pieces/lb.

hoss tool goes with 10# per 40 foot of row and i lean towards that.also last few years i am leaning towards whole planted potatoes produce more but like all things its going to take years of harvests to prove it out in my gardens sine each year has its own struggles.

 

[elkhound]

100 foot row...if you get the average good harvest of 1.5# per foot thats 150# per row. thats 2.5 bushels of potatoes. looking at it calorie wise its only 59,100 calories...your yearly goal is 1 million...see the troubles here. often people think i have 2 bushels or 10 bushels or whatever and think wow i done good. but i say many or most of us are so NOT use to harvesting from season to season we forget just how much food that really is.not even adding in the aspect of saving seed back for the next season.that 100 foot row needs 25# or at least 20# minimum to plant back. so for each 100 foot row you harvest you need to set aside a decent portion to be able to replant.150# harvested per 100 foot row you set aside 20-25#..that harvest is now down to 125# of potatoes for you to eat.125# is 49,250 calories to consume.

5 rows of potatoes at 100ft is going to get you 246,250 calories after setting aside your seed for next growing season. lets face it the seed for next season has to come off the top or there wont be harvests in future.the seed for those 5 rows is 125#.

this much effort only gets you approx a quarter of the way in calories for 1 person. most people are a couple or family of 4. crunch those numbers.

 

[Bacpacker]

I've harvested anywhere from 2 bushel per 100' to little of nothing year to year. It does vary quite a bit. I use about 5lb of seed per row, cut up with a good eye in each piece. Over all the work involved isnt much more than anything else, but tends to produce a decent quantity. Like everything else i grow, it just a part of what we eat. I get tired of eating the same thing all the time. Hard times will change that, but for now I'll keep it spread out.

 

[Meerkat]

thread about growing potatoes...starting with vintage material.this is from small farmers journal reprint of
How to Grow an Acre of Potatoes
USDA BULLETIN No. 1190 Issued 1921, Revised 1924

i would caution all about section about seed disenfection and products used. i am not sure if this practice is still used.in other words you are responsible for your own actions. use caution in vintage bulletins as things do change as we gain knowledge.


https://smallfarmersjournal.com/how...e,planting an acre of potatoes is 8.6 bushels.

I keep putting planting them off, not even sure where to find them now.

 

[Grizzleyette___Adams]

I want a potato planting buddy like this ol' dawg, lol.

 

[randyt]

I've planted potato peelings with a small eye and grew taters.

 

[Grizzleyette___Adams]

100 foot row...if you get the average good harvest of 1.5# per foot thats 150# per row. thats 2.5 bushels of potatoes. looking at it calorie wise its only 59,100 calories...your yearly goal is 1 million...see the troubles here. often people think i have 2 bushels or 10 bushels or whatever and think wow i done good. but i say many or most of us are so NOT use to harvesting from season to season we forget just how much food that really is.not even adding in the aspect of saving seed back for the next season.that 100 foot row needs 25# or at least 20# minimum to plant back. so for each 100 foot row you harvest you need to set aside a decent portion to be able to replant.150# harvested per 100 foot row you set aside 20-25#..that harvest is now down to 125# of potatoes for you to eat.125# is 49,250 calories to consume.

5 rows of potatoes at 100ft is going to get you 246,250 calories after setting aside your seed for next growing season. lets face it the seed for next season has to come off the top or there wont be harvests in future.the seed for those 5 rows is 125#.

this much effort only gets you approx a quarter of the way in calories for 1 person. most people are a couple or family of 4. crunch those numbers.

Yes, those numbers in this post and the one before this one are quite sobering. And a closer look at them will be useful in planning ahead for self-sufficiency.

Similarly, many people who are learning how to forage wild plants often say, "I can survive as long as I know how to do this."

For reasons that Elkhound pointed out, this is not necessarily true! In the wild (and in our gardens), we can actually spend more calories than we take in, depending upon what we are harvesting. Some items are more calorie dense than others; some are easier or harder to harvest, which could translate into spending more calories than what we would consume.

On the other hand, calories are only half the equation; nutritional value figures into it as well.

This would be an excellent topic to explore in another thread. But, back to potatoes!

One of the neatest things about potaotes, they can be grown in both Spring and Fall, and they store well for a time without the need for further labor or equipment.

I love this book because I don't have a "real" root cellar, and showed me that I can "root cellar" my food just about anywhere, even in a closet:

Root Cellaring: Natural Cold Storage of Fruits & Vegetables Paperback – Illustrated, January 9, 1991 by Mike Bubel (Author), Nancy Bubel

https://www.amazon.com/Root-Cellari...keywords=root+cellaring&qid=1603506568&sr=8-1
I have the paperback version, but you can read it for free if you have an Amazon Unlimited plan.

 

[Bacpacker]

Yes, those numbers in this post and the one before this one are quite sobering. And a closer look at them will be useful in planning ahead for self-sufficiency.

Similarly, many people who are learning how to forage wild plants often say, "I can survive as long as I know how to do this."

For reasons that Elkhound pointed out, this is not necessarily true! In the wild (and in our gardens), we can actually spend more calories than we take in, depending upon what we are harvesting. Some items are more calorie dense than others; some are easier or harder to harvest, which could translate into spending more calories than what we would consume.

On the other hand, calories are only half the equation; nutritional value figures into it as well.

This would be an excellent topic to explore in another thread. But, back to potatoes!

One of the neatest things about potaotes, they can be grown in both Spring and Fall, and they store well for a time without the need for further labor or equipment.

I love this book because I don't have a "real" root cellar:

Root Cellaring: Natural Cold Storage of Fruits & Vegetables Paperback – Illustrated, January 9, 1991 by Mike Bubel (Author), Nancy Bubel

https://www.amazon.com/Root-Cellari...keywords=root+cellaring&qid=1603506568&sr=8-1
I have the paperback version, but you can read it for free if you have an Amazon Unlimited plan.

I have that book Grizz. Very good book.

 

[elkhound]

Yes, those numbers in this post and the one before this one are quite sobering. And a closer look at them will be useful in planning ahead for self-sufficiency.

Similarly, many people who are learning how to forage wild plants often say, "I can survive as long as I know how to do this."

For reasons that Elkhound pointed out, this is not necessarily true! In the wild (and in our gardens), we can actually spend more calories than we take in, depending upon what we are harvesting. Some items are more calorie dense than others; some are easier or harder to harvest, which could translate into spending more calories than what we would consume.

On the other hand, calories are only half the equation; nutritional value figures into it as well.

This would be an excellent topic to explore in another thread. But, back to potatoes!

One of the neatest things about potaotes, they can be grown in both Spring and Fall, and they store well for a time without the need for further labor or equipment.

I love this book because I don't have a "real" root cellar, and showed me that I can "root cellar" my food just about anywhere, even in a closet:

Root Cellaring: Natural Cold Storage of Fruits & Vegetables Paperback – Illustrated, January 9, 1991 by Mike Bubel (Author), Nancy Bubel

https://www.amazon.com/Root-Cellari...keywords=root+cellaring&qid=1603506568&sr=8-1
I have the paperback version, but you can read it for free if you have an Amazon Unlimited plan.

i know its hard for many to face these facts...but with examples of minnesota starvation experiment,our plans to starve russia,or any other country out and now 74 individual cases(alone cast) showing just how fast a person can go down hill. i have had to change my mind..not very fast mind you..but i had to take a hard look the last 8 years or so and i done some experiments on myself and was shocked by results.theres a lot of things i could say that would make the population run with flaming hair but i put it to practice and in very short order found shocking results.i do have 27 pages of notes and proofs to pretty much back up claims i now have and coupled with scientific stuff like the above mentioned examples...well....just ..well....i hope people figure it out sooner rather than later.

i know an example where a bunch of folks sat down.took the survival seed vaults..various ones and spent hours crunching numbers....no calories..in fact they figured out calories to do said work and found out the ran in negative column for the efforts.

i dont have the skill to type all of it out here i have to type as it flows out my brain or i could fill some space up.the short of it is we have examples that are 1000's of years in living proof.corn,beans and squash and coupled with potatoes at times.buffalobordwoman and her tribe refused to eat potatoes even though they were forced to grow them.but yet makah went straight across water to abandoned spanish fort in canada and gathered the ozette fingerling potato to grow and eat and add into their daily lives...they adapted others not so much. this is not say they didnt eat meat and fat as we know they did but this is base of their diet.carol deppe has it figured out as well in her books and talks about items to grow. all food is not the same BUT all activity is not the same either. you need a very different type food if hoofing miles and miles were a quick burn is needed. hiking burns 400 calories an hour.theres a reason gorp was used for so long by hikers. salt...you blow through salts and more.the variations in individuals as well. i had a co worker who blew through 10,000 calories a day. one example you know how we..the average we...eat a candy bar? he ate a 1 pound candy bar.

bottom line..no calories no life..in fast order...90 days even for fat people like myself..limited calories in take 6months/180days.

#1 survival tool....the storehouse...be it stored goods bought or grown yourself.

p.s. i can grow more walking onions in a 4x10 section that i can gather off acres of land of wild onions and its safer and less calories burned in collecting plus do death camas to watch for in poisoning myself.not 100% if i ever seen it either.

 

[elkhound]

 

[randyt]

If memory serves I think those folks that hid out in Siberia grew potatoes.

 

[Weedygarden]

thread about growing potatoes...starting with vintage material.this is from small farmers journal reprint of
How to Grow an Acre of Potatoes
USDA BULLETIN No. 1190 Issued 1921, Revised 1924

i would caution all about section about seed disenfection and products used. i am not sure if this practice is still used.in other words you are responsible for your own actions. use caution in vintage bulletins as things do change as we gain knowledge.


https://smallfarmersjournal.com/how...e,planting an acre of potatoes is 8.6 bushels.

Thank you, for starting this very important conversation. While the potato is considered a lowly food, it has caused starvation when there were problems in the growth season and prevented starvation as well. I know the potato filled the gap for my family during the Great Depression.

The potato is not something that we can't really stockpile long term, except in canned and dried form. I'm talking about potato seeds. or seed potatoes. They really only last one season and then they are done, if not planted. There are many things that we can so easily stockpile now that will last for years if properly stored. Those dried things are so inexpensive. Potatoes are not expensive, but the only way I can have five gallon buckets of them is in dehydrated form.

I love potatoes, but I eat them so rarely now. I had scalloped potatoes at Easter. I may have had some in a smothered burrito a couple months ago, that the restaurant got wrong.

Ever hear, don't plant potatoes from the store? Get seed potatoes? Well, if you have potatoes that have sprouted, why not plant them, or at least the eyes, or sprouts? The Wikipedia piece about potatoes says that there are 4,000 varieties. In America, we eat just a few varieties. I have 4 varieties growing in my garden this year. Is that enough variety to help if there were a potato disease that takes out some varieties? I hope so.

 

[elkhound]

one thing about potato famine no one talks about is that during the height of it.they grew a record crop of wheat. but absentee landowners sold it off starving the workers in area and peoples. this is so stupid...you cant starve out your workers be them slaves or wage slaves. just another reason to hold on to your own lands no matter what..no land..no life.a plot of land means everything in many cases.

i have planted potatoes from store with mixed results..fingerlings have done great. i planted baking potatoes..it was a bust for most part. i wont do that type again.

 

[elkhound]

looking at a couple of years of potatoes production by a family in a somewhat unstable area...ukraine family here.

2016 harvest




2015

 

[elkhound]

another family in same area

 

[Duncan]

Urozhay kartofelya!
When I first started thinking about 'survival gardening' it was the run-up to the Y2K fiasco. I found an article about as thing called a 'tater tire tower' involving 3 or 4 large truck tires, with some of the sidewalls trimmed. I laid one down , filled it with dirt, and planted seed potatoes (in this case, one tire each of Yukon Golds and Pontiac Reds). When the foliage was about 6 inches high I added another tire, more dirt, and more seed potatoes, and repeated it yet a third time. When the combined foliage (which was pretty full by this time) died down, we broke apart the tires and picked the taters out.

This time (now that we moved to a place with a bigger garden, I planted both kinds of taters in a 4' X 20' raised bed like the rest of the crops. The taters grew, and there was a good yield, but it was a real pain in the gazootkus getting them out without spearing lots of them with the potato-fork. This coming year it's back to the tater tire tower trick!

What I'd really like to be able to do is grow sweet-potatoes. Twin Falls County ID is pretty cold (it's 24° F right now) and even with Murasaki sweet potatoes, I wasn't able to get but one fingerling!

 

[elkhound]

@Duncan try Beauregard. i planted some very late one year and babied them and got a harvest in shorter days.

if i was you i would get slips started and once i got them going transplant into 6x6 or 8x8 pots to get a nice root system going long before time to set out..last frost date...then you get a jump on days by at least 3 weeks.

i ran tests this year of potting various transplants into larger pots and of those ones i got zero transplant shock.its extra work but was well worth the effort.especially the tomatoes. i used a smaller pot on summer squash and peppers and was much better as well. i even tried some late season tomatoes i bought from a store that were extremely root bound in trays.they took of as soon as they hit the pot and transplanted without shock and were fruiting in no time.the ones i used were old blueberry pots and they actually measure 7x7.they are same size both in diameter and depth as clam portion on post hole clam shell diggers. i used those to dig hole and just turned pot upside down in one hand to free from pot and just dropped straight in hole.a small tomato transplant in those pots filled entire pot up with root system in just 2 weeks and that way all dirt held together easy to transplant that large of clump of dirt without falling apart.

 

[elkhound]

@Duncan went looking for info i have. what i done in 2018 was i had empty spot in garden and wanted t put something in it. local place had a tray of half dead root bound bonnie Beauregard plants in the little 6 packs.i think i gave $1 for them. the foliage was overflowing on them so i clipped it and put in jar of water to grow roots.i see in my notes i had 1/4inch roots on july 12th. i cant fine date i planted but i have a picture of them in garden on august 6th..see below..i dodged our annual first frost of around oct 8-10th and harvested on oct 22nd..i was told to always leave sweet taters in ground till weather kills them as it makes them sweeter. i believe if a person put them in nice pot and gets nice root system going way before time to set out and takes good care of them and has nice prepared planting out area you can get a harvest in 60-70 days.so even counting cloning time it was just over 90 days.i believe i can get much better starts to set out that the ones pictured now after seeing results of using the larger pots.i will be using this method from now on to drop extra crops in ground after something is harvested and to keep the lag time to harvest less.

8-6-2018

10-22-2018

 

[Weedygarden]

Urozhay kartofelya!
When I first started thinking about 'survival gardening' it was the run-up to the Y2K fiasco. I found an article about as thing called a 'tater tire tower' involving 3 or 4 large truck tires, with some of the sidewalls trimmed. I laid one down , filled it with dirt, and planted seed potatoes (in this case, one tire each of Yukon Golds and Pontiac Reds). When the foliage was about 6 inches high I added another tire, more dirt, and more seed potatoes, and repeated it yet a third time. When the combined foliage (which was pretty full by this time) died down, we broke apart the tires and picked the taters out.

This time (now that we moved to a place with a bigger garden, I planted both kinds of taters in a 4' X 20' raised bed like the rest of the crops. The taters grew, and there was a good yield, but it was a real pain in the gazootkus getting them out without spearing lots of them with the potato-fork. This coming year it's back to the tater tire tower trick!

What I'd really like to be able to do is grow sweet-potatoes. Twin Falls County ID is pretty cold (it's 24° F right now) and even with Murasaki sweet potatoes, I wasn't able to get but one fingerling!

I planted sweet potatoes in a 5 gallon bucket. I was late in starting them. I tried to grow slips and one survived. I planted the slip and the whole potato which had more growth into the bucket. It has been growing. I brought the bucket into the house so they would survive this cold weather we are having. I have no idea how many potatoes I will get, or when I will harvest them. I am going to get them under grow lights when I get my shelves, etc. set up, but now they have sun light and the bucket is sitting in a big pot tray for catching water when I water it. This is another science experiment. Another year, I would like a few of these.

 

[Meerkat]

View attachment 52291

I guess the clowns didn't realize that epedemicss eventually go global, was it chemical or parasitic type warfare on the animals?
I hear Lyme Desease was created in a lab as was many other bio weapons.Many Americans are now disabled from Lyme and don't even know it.
Rumored too, CDC has some splaining to do also with this Corona BS ,or is it all my tin foil hat spinning from isolation madness!

 

[elkhound]

I guess the clowns didn't realize that epedemicss eventually go global, was it chemical or parasitic type warfare on the animals?
I hear Lyme Desease was created in a lab as was many other bio weapons.Many Americans are now disabled from Lyme and don't even know it.
Rumored too, CDC has some splaining to do also with this Corona BS ,or is it all my tin foil hat spinning from isolation madness!

not going to discuss that here...the part i want people to read is the bottom part of calorie reduction for a year and what effects it has on a society.meerkat is trying to derail my thread from taters to tin hat...roflmao !

1400 daily calories is starvation level for a society...maintained for 12 months would reduce population by 20% and decrease manual labor performance by 95% and clerical and light labor by 80%.

 

[Meerkat]

not going to discuss that here...the part i want people to read is the bottom part of calorie reduction for a year and what effects it has on a society.meerkat is trying to derail my thread from taters to tin hat...roflmao !

1400 daily calories is starvation level for a society...maintained for 12 months would reduce population by 20% and decrease manual labor performance by 95% and clerical and light labor by 80%.

Whoops I did it again, sorry .I'll try harder to not run away with a topic.

 

[Meerkat]

looking at a couple of years of potatoes production by a family in a somewhat unstable area...ukraine family here.

2016 harvest




2015

I'll watch these later,looks interesting.

 

[Meerkat]

If memory serves I think those folks that hid out in Siberia grew potatoes.

That must have been some really cold tolerant potatoes..

 

[randyt]

probably....on another note I saw a show on PBS TV. They were talking about some big trenches that were found at some Inca settlements. It was determined that these trenches were filled with mud and compost and were used to grow taters. The trenches held water and acted as a heat sink.. I have not found another reference to that.