Potatoes

[PurpleBug]

Complete beginner here. I’m growing potatoes in a grow bag and have just read something online that makes me think I’ve done it wrong:-/

I chitted my potatoes planted them in the bag and when they were leafy I put compost all around the stems. I didn’t cover anything other than increase the soil level around the stems. Ive don’t this a few times and my bag is almost full now.

I just read something about covering new shoots? I didn’t cover any of the leaves just piles soil around the stems.

Have I don’t it wrong? Am I going to end up with just the 5 original potatoes I planted?

[burnie]

Sounds like you have done things correctly to me.

[SarrissUK]

They're in the ground, yes? Then you'll be fine I don't earth up around my spuds really, at most do I spread some well rotted manure on them, but then they're lucky

[Logunner]

I’ve grown my first ever spuds and did it in bags.

3 to 4” of compost with some added fert, then filled the bags with straw and other than watering left them to it..

[Forage420]

I'd like to know if it's less work to mound up first and then plant into the ridge of the mound because this year I decided to create furrows with a back hoe and plant into the trench of it, great in theory, but pulling soil back into the trench and then mounding up as the potatoes grow is extremely hard work. Any suggestions?

[nickdub]

stick to the way you are doing it - it is hard work - if it is dry, then they need water especially when the tubers are forming.

[Trouvere]

I'm quite an annoying crank on the subject of potato hilling. I look askance at my fellow growers' arrangements - in our little 56 square foot beds they set up their troughs and hills and end up actually putting potatoes in barely half the area. I plant twice as many potatoes, quite deep to start with, and let them get on with it with no earthing up.

Of course I'd ideally like some scientific justification that I'm doing the right thing by being lazy. Enter Carling and Walworth (1990), 'The effect of hilling on yield and quality of potatoes', which can be found as a PDF online. Their results show that non-hilled potatoes have a slightly lower yield and a higher proportion of wasted green potatoes, but overall useful yields are still about 82% that of properly hilled-up potatoes.

So I'm happy to get 80% of the yield per plant but with twice as many plants in the same area, since space is very much my limiting factor. If I had all the room I needed, I'd probably consider earthing up.

[Jay-ell]

Complete beginner here. I’m growing potatoes in a grow bag and have just read something online that makes me think I’ve done it wrong:-/

I chitted my potatoes planted them in the bag and when they were leafy I put compost all around the stems. I didn’t cover anything other than increase the soil level around the stems. Ive don’t this a few times and my bag is almost full now.

I just read something about covering new shoots? I didn’t cover any of the leaves just piles soil around the stems.

Have I don’t it wrong? Am I going to end up with just the 5 original potatoes I planted?

Sounds like you're doing it fine. How full are the bags with compost now? One of the reasons to cover spuds is to protect them from frost damage, another is to make sure that the light can't get to the new spuds and turn them green.

I'm quite an annoying crank on the subject of potato hilling. I look askance at my fellow growers' arrangements - in our little 56 square foot beds they set up their troughs and hills and end up actually putting potatoes in barely half the area. I plant twice as many potatoes, quite deep to start with, and let them get on with it with no earthing up.

Of course I'd ideally like some scientific justification that I'm doing the right thing by being lazy. Enter Carling and Walworth (1990), 'The effect of hilling on yield and quality of potatoes', which can be found as a PDF online. Their results show that non-hilled potatoes have a slightly lower yield and a higher proportion of wasted green potatoes, but overall useful yields are still about 82% that of properly hilled-up potatoes.

So I'm happy to get 80% of the yield per plant but with twice as many plants in the same area, since space is very much my limiting factor. If I had all the room I needed, I'd probably consider earthing up.

What Trouvere said with sugar sprinkles.

I plant my spuds in the bed with a bulb planter rammed as deep as I can into the soil one foot apart - saves my back from digging all those troughs.

The spuds get a heavy mulch at the start with grass/straw/weeds and this gets topped up once or twice (or more depending on how much grass I get) which helps cover any surface spuds and protect them from the sun (ok, maybe not all of them but most of them). The grass breaks down feeding the soil and improving it for next season. It also adds a bit of insulation for the colder weather earlier in the year and keeps in moisture, suppresses some of the weeds, etc, etc, etc.

https://youtu.be/zOcwfcvzGec?t=272

which works

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqjXblR_cFM

[bario1]

If you put spuds in the ground, you get more spuds. There’s no earthing up in Nature, it’s just something some of us do to try and make a good thing even better. Personally, I just bury my spuds 8” deep and let them get on with it.

[ameno]

If you put spuds in the ground, you get more spuds. There’s no earthing up in Nature, it’s just something some of us do to try and make a good thing even better.

There's also no problems having green potatoes in nature, though. Green potatoes still sprout and grow just fine, after all. What they aren't, however, is suitable for human consumption.