Spuds and beans

[redback]

Potatoes (spuds) are a staple food of many countries including Australia. Basically, everybody eats them either as mashed spuds or chips, baked, roasted, barbequed and in/on soups and stews.
Beans are underestimated here and probably not eaten enough. As soon as my crop of beans start producing, I drop all other greens in favor of freshly picked green and purple beans.
I will drop a few hints on how to grow these crops in the coming entries.

 

[redback]

The potato in the photo below has grown from a small spud left behind when harvesting last year's crop. It proves that any little spud will grow again but that's a problem. If you keep replanting your own small spuds you will get 'blight' and that has wiped out whole national crops. So, when I pull this spud, I will look for skin blemishes and cut it open to ensure the center is not diseased in any way. Throw it away and don't use any of that regrowth for planting.
Strictly speaking only certified seed spud should be used for planting your crops.

 

[redback]

Fresh green beans can be eaten as forage - raw. That's the big difference between buying them and growing them. When they are picked fresh, they snap rather than bend.
To grow them you need the standard fertile, well-drained soil but this time it needs to be slightly alkaline - pH slightly above 7. When they sprout, a large bent leaf comes through the soil surface and unfurls like some alien lifeform emerging from the underworld. To amuse, surprise and educate young children put a bean seed in a pot of damp soil, leave it on their windowsill (or the kitchen windowsill) and tell them to watch it daily until something happens - whoaa!

 

[Oliver Buckle]

Strictly speaking only certified seed spud should be used for planting your crops.

You are right, but I have often grown left over supermarket potatoes that have started to sprout and never had problems. The way I see it no respectable farmer is going to tolerate disease in their crop, and to back this up I read somewhere recently that the average potato crop is sprayed eight times before harvest, I see that as another reason for growing your own if you have the space.

 

[plot22]

I maybe wrong here but I was always given to understand that blight was an airborne disease. In the UK we have blight watch where we are warned about it relevant to the water in the atmosphere. This year I am only going to set new certified seed except for one row of Lady Crisiti which are first earlies and which in all my years have never succumbed to blight in all the years that I have grown them

 

[Meadowlark]

...Strictly speaking only certified seed spud should be used for planting your crops.

If I followed that restriction, I would never get much(any) of a fall crop of potatoes. The commercial growers harvesting seed potatoes are mostly in the northern latitudes here.

Their harvested potatoes are largely dormant until Dec. Jan. which is too late for the fall crop. The only way around that I have found is to use my home-grown potatoes which are harvested in late May as seed. They are ready to plant by late August which is perfect for fall crops here.

This year I harvested over 100 pounds of the fall potato crop entirely from my own seed and completely disease free. I'll carry over about 15 pounds of that crop for seed potatoes this spring...again 100% disease free and organic. This also enables 365 days a year supply of multiple varieties of home-grown potatoes.

 

[redback]

You are right, but I have often grown left over supermarket potatoes that have started to sprout and never had problems.

You are in a majority. The small number and high cost of certified spuds available in shops, tells me that everyone is planting the spuds that sprout in their larder.

 

[redback]

I maybe wrong here but I was always given to understand that blight was an airborne disease. In the UK we have blight watch where we are warned about it relevant to the water in the atmosphere. This year I am only going to set new certified seed except for one row of Lady Crisiti which are first earlies and which in all my years have never succumbed to blight in all the years that I have grown them

I looked it up and blight and wilt on potatoes and tomatoes can both be airborne as well as spread by infected plants. Tomato Wilt has come in to my garden, apparently on the air. The only potato disease I have experienced is Blight from replanting too many generations.
The Lady Crisiti might be resistant in some way? I wished I had kept planting the 'Purple Jester' variety because I haven't been able to find it anywhere.

 

[redback]

This year I harvested over 100 pounds of the fall potato crop entirely from my own seed and completely disease free.

Good to hear these experiences and I'll change my thinking appropriately. You're right about the timing of certified seed spud - they never seem to be around when you want to plant.

 

[redback]

The soil preparation for spuds is amongst the most extensive for any crop. They are very heavy feeders but only want limited nitrogen because they are a tuber crop not a leaf crop. Commercially bags of Superphosphate and Complete D are used and then a green manure crop is grown and turned in prior to planting. They are grown on a seven-year cycle.
Organically I use aged poultry manure, homemade compost, aged straw and liquid seaweed, general pelletized fertilizer and two new microbial fertilizers. Other organic growers add 'Blood and Bone' but I am not a fan. To top off the crop when planted and mounded I lay straw mulch to draw down excess nitrogen.
There are some who use potatoes to modify clay soil and they sometimes just rake the soil, place the spuds at 400mm (1'4") apart on top of the ground and cover with thick straw.

 

[Meadowlark]

The soil preparation for spuds is amongst the most extensive for any crop. ...

I agree the prep is somewhat extensive but not as demanding as corn crops for me because it isn't a big N2 demand like corn.

I rely extensively on composted manure and diverse cover crops grown in that manure and turned under well before planting. It is critical, in my experience, to make your amendments well in advance of planting.

For example, here is the fall/winter cover crop growing in a bed of composted manure that will be my potato bed later this spring.

This has been turned under green and disced and made into raised rows ready for planting later in February.

This soil will produce about 12 to 15 pounds of new potatoes per pound of seed potato without any artificial fertilizers or other fertilizers or insect and/or disease problems.

 

[redback]

It is critical, in my experience, to make your amendments well in advance of planting.

Your photos are great, and that early prep is highly advisable. A 12-15kg. return per 1kg. planted is the sort of return I have achieved and call very good. I have heard of 50 times return but I doubt it. It's a bit like fishing where the catch gets bigger with every telling.

 

[Meadowlark]

... I have heard of 50 times return but I doubt it. It's a bit like fishing where the catch gets bigger with every telling.

LOL and so true.

One poster on here made a similar claim...but upon further review the claim fell apart. I asked commercial growers once what was the best ratio they had ever seen...and the response was generally 15 to 20 times. They said claims of 50 to 60 times were likely fisherman's tales.

 

[redback]

The claim I heard was from a highly respected tv personality speaking publicly. He was a Tasmanian and it's possible that Kennebec spuds there can grow to 500 grams from a tiny seed spud. And if you grow several from the small starter it could add up to 50:1. Possible but rare? The best I've ever had was 17:1 on a fairly small sized crop.

 

[redback]

Meadowlark's last photo above shows the furrows of a tractor. These photos show the 'Planters Hoe'. This hoe makes similar rows of furrows (with mounds between) as the tractor. The furrows made by the hoe are 6"-8" deep and the mounds are a similar height. When the spuds are planted in the furrows the hoe is dragged along filling the furrows with the dirt from the mounds until the mounds are furrows and the furrows are mounds. Thus the spuds are planted about 12" - 16" deep (300 - 400mm).
It takes about three weeks to a month for the spud shoots to show on the surface when you plant them this deep. If the shoots start to show in two weeks you have probably planted them too shallow, or they have too much nitrogen.
Either way it's a good idea to mound them again (when shoots appear) with the hoe, both weeding and covering any exposed tubers as you go. Cover the whole spud patch in straw and water every week for a half hour (give or take depending on weather and irrigation type).