Post date: May 28, 2020 1:34:23 PM
Potatoes are cool weather crops. They take about 10 weeks from sowing to harvest. If the soil is not warmer than 50-60deg in that time, that helps. Cooler the soil, better the crop.
Potatoes won’t take frost. The plants simply die when temps fall below freezing. In Atlanta, sowing end of Feb or early March is ideal. Cover the plants if any frost days occur.
Choose varieties that suit your grow area. Check with seed potatoes vendors. Don’t sow kitchen potatoes, they can be diseased.
The Charles Dowding method for potatoes is definitely superior. Better plants and better harvests. Summary here:
1. No tilling, digging or making trenches. In prepared beds to which compost has been applied, push a hand shovel in to make a foot deep lesion. Place the seed potato or the chits, firmly in.
2. No need to hill or cover the plants for the first two months.
3. End of 8 weeks, apply another layer of compost to the plants, taking care to cover each main stem with a mounded hill at its feet.
The idea is to protect potatoes from the sun. Nothing more.
Potatoes form in that one foot area between the seed and the top soil. Aplenty. Each plant yields 4-6, and 10-12 is a bounty.
Potatoes need no fertilization after sowing, and no other care. Default weekly watering. Just need cool soil to form spuds.
In 10 weeks they are ready to harvest. Plants turn yellow and begin to flop. Stop watering and wait for two weeks for potatoes to cure a bit.
Harvest and store with soil in a cool dark place.