Potatoes

I plant a few potatoes every year.

Last Year

Last year at this time, my dad was in town visiting from Prince Edward Island which is famous for its potatoes.  I purchased my four customary seed potatoes, two Yukon Gold and two Russet.  While we were planting, my dad asked why I wasn’t cutting them into pieces like the farmers.  The reason is since I only grow four plants I wasn’t worried about the additional $0.25 for whole seed potatoes.  We got to talking though and I got to thinking, “Is there a meaningful difference between planting a whole versus a half seed potato?” and "What effect does fewer 'eyes' on the seed potato have on yields?".  So I devised a very simple experiment.  I would plant one whole and one half seed of each variety and weigh the results in the fall.  Well, there was no discernible difference in the size or fullness of the plants of each variety and the whole seed potatoes yielded 6 lbs each and the half seed potatoes yielded 5.5 and 6 lbs each.  Essentially no difference.

This Year
This year I again only planted four potatoes but this time I decided to experiment with four different varieties (Kenebec, Russet, Irish Cobbler, Yukon Gold).  But I hit a snag just after purchasing the seed potatoes.  The lady at the store put them all in the same bag so I’m not sure which variety is which.  D’oh!  The experiment is not a total loss though, I am confident I will be able to identify the varieties either by the plant or the harvested tuber.  We shall see!

Planting

Planting is pretty easy.  I dig a fairly deep hole in the bed and toss in a couple scoops of compost.  I place the seed potato in the bottom of the hole and level off the bed.  As the plants get a few inches tall I will draw up soil from around the plant buring all but the upper-most leaves.  This will from small mound.  I will continue to mound up my potatoes until the plants get fairly large.  The practice encourages more tuber development.