Dumb potato question (s)...

What exactly is a set?

How much space would you need for 30 sets, and what would you expect for a yield?

"Sets" is usually a new fangled term for a precut potato. I know a few companies like Gurney's offer precut potatoes, which are basically potato eyes with just a little piece of potato attached to them. At any rate I plant a piece of potato containing at least two eyes spaced about one foot in the row. I expect about 14 lbs for each pound of potatoes planted. Northern growers get higher yields. If your "sets" contain two eyes, then you are looking at about 30 foot of row. If you have the ones nibbled down to one eye, I would plant two in a hill reducing your space to 14 ft. Rows need to about 3 ft. apart. The reason for that is that all of them will emerge and leave you with blank spaces.

Thank you! Guess I don't need to buy 30 sets!!!

"Dumb potato" ? Well, I grew a dumb potato once, but don't get me started...I'm known for tall tales! :>)

If you're buying "catalog sets" I'd buy at least 30 "sets"...they are very tiny and really disappointed me when I saw what my neighbor rec'd in the mail. Some of them barely had one eye, much less two. (You'd come out to the better buying seed potatoes and cutting your own.)

However, I tend to plant my tater eyes about 8-12 inches apart, depending on which soil I'm planting into (some of this ground is nice and loose, some is harder/clay-ish).

Spacing between rows is determined by whatever method you choose to hill them up; can be spaced close if you will be hilling by hand or should be spaced further apart if your tractor requires more space to operate. Three feet, as Farmerdill suggests, is ample space though for handworking as well as for smaller tractors.

And for a great crop be sure to add some potassium and phosphate rock to your soil...they'll love it!

Shoe.

Oh, for Pete's sake - now what's a seed potato??? LOL! Ya'll are gonna learn me one way or the other, arncha?

yep, you'll learn! :>)

A seed potato is a potato that has been specifically grown to be sown/planted to make more taters (as opposed to potatoes being grown to be eaten).

When purchased locally you buy them by the pound or bag and they are the whole potato, not like the "cut eyes" that the mail order people quite often offer). Then, it's up to you to cut them up as you like, usually so each piece will be roughly the size of a golf ball and contain at least two eyes on them. (I shoot for 3 eyes myself!)

And Sequee, if you want in ensure a good crop the taters will need a consistent supply of water. A little known trick is to set your tater eyes in the row with an onion set in between each tater piece. (Alternate tater, onion, tater, onion, etc). What happens is, as you know from working with onions in the kitchen, the onions will make the tater eyes water, thereby keeping the soil consistently moist.

Ain't that right, Farmerdill!? ;>) *grin

This message was edited Jan 1, 2007 1:52 PM

LOL! Can we now move from dump potato question to dumb onion question??? Can I grow these alternating onions from seed (of which I have plenty) or would I be beter off to get them as sets/starts for my first try? Or is there such a thing as seed onions? (I told it would be a dumbo question!)

Right Shoe, and we can take her snipe hunting on Valentines day. bet she would enjoy that. Actually Sequee, a seed potato is just a common potato, grown under specific conditions to insure that they are not carrying a disease. The fields have to be inspected as well as the potatoes and certified disease free. As for onions, they can grown from seed, sets, or plants. Bear in mind that onions have a very long season, 100 -150 days from seed. Most folks use sets, storage type onions that are densely planted and only allowed to get dime size before drying, for green onions. Those who want large onions, particularly the sweet types, use plants.

Interesting that you can plant onions and potatoes together for good growth when they cause each other to rot if you store them together.

Ease up- Shoe was making a joke. Taters and onions don't do well together. Tater plants are too big and will shade out the onions.

Oops. guess I won't try that then.
>:}

Ok, Shoe, you got me, too, on the tater & onion companion planting!

They do go well together in a tarte though.

Janice I do believe you have been Shoed lol.

I like to buy tiny seed potatoes that don't need cutting at all. Big spuds will grow from a small seed . I call them droppers they go from the bag into the hole and don't need hardened or dusted. Ernie

Seed potatoes have been specially bred to be virus free, so you aren't introducing blight or any other nasties as you might if you just keep on using potatoes you save yourself. Although so far I haven't had any blight in the garden, so I keep a few egg sized potatoes back from each variety to grow the following year.

If you keep them in a dark,cool, frost free place they stay dormant until you need to plant them.

The ones I save from the earlies usually start sprouting before it is warm enough to plant them outside, so I put a few in the greenhouse border for some lovely early new potatoes.

They don't sell potato sets in this country. Wouldn't it be easier to cut a few potatoes up yourself and dust the cut surfaces with flowers of sulphur if you want bits of potato. There is much less chance of the potatoes rotting if you use small whole ones, and you don't have to mess about with chemicals on your food.

LOL, SHOE!!!!!!!!!!!!! I take everything you and Farmerdill say as sacred, I almost started planning how I'm gonna arange the onions and potatoes!!!!!!!!!

Hehehe...well, glad I could start you off with a New Years' laugh! And I apologize to others who don't know the jokester that pops up in some of my postings! But certainly glad ya'll don't go revamping your spud planting to include onions, unless you want to plant them a row or two over!

Ernie, I don't cut up the small ones either, just the bigger ones. (I buy them in a 50 pound bag and can't pick and choose so end up with all sizes in that bag.)

Happy planting Folks (when the time comes for it!)

Shoe.

While we are doing those old tater tales that our grandparents used on the city slickers. Did you ever try uphill planting above a cutbank?

Ok Dill, for us slower ones, you'll have to explain the post/joke. What happens when you plant uphill above a cutbank?
(I'm notoriously slow on catching on to all jokes and puns.)

You planted the potatoes in rows straight up the hill. At digging time, you get open the bottom hill, hold your potato sack and let all the potatoes in the row roll down into the bag. Supposedly originated with an old fellow back home, who was asked by a city slicker driving by why there were potatoes in the road. Actually it was just a few scratched out by the chickens that rolled down into the road. In those days there was contempt on both sides between city folks and country folks. That story was told for years to illustrate the ignorance of city slickers. Figgered Shoe had probably heard that one.

hehehe...yep, I've heard of that "technique"! And love it!

Why it reminds me of the time we planted taters on the flatland next to the Big River Little Creek when I was a youngin'....but don't get me started. Quite a "technique" we lucked upon that year! But, maybe another time, for it is quite long-winded!

Farmerdill, on another topic, remember the year some of us got together at your place and came up with the very first pototomato plant? Now Folks, that was a great success! Since taters and maters are in the same family we were sure it would work so we proved to the world our knowledge.

To cut the story quite short we grafted two plants, a tomato and a potato plant, and had the most wonderful harvest! Those plants grew tomatoes above ground and potatoes under ground. Wow! What a year that was!

Unfortunately certain people in the Agri business world let us know we were freaks (or maybe the plants were?) and it became a source of embarrassment for folks that didn't understand our goal. And, due to that effort coming to a halt, well, well...uhhh, I have to admit...

...I decided the next year to set that field aside for my new crop of marshmallows. (They finally were harvested around Wintertime and we ate most of them as S'mores.)

Shoe.

Yep those pomatos were great at first, but the size envy between the potatoes and tomatoes caused some plants to have nervous breakdowns. Just couldn't handle the demands I guess. You actually perfected that technique of growing Marshmallow okra?

Ok fellows, a good one, I'll have to get me a flock of chickens to scratch out my tater crop this year, no shortage of hills around here either.... And be sure to send me some seed from those pomatoes and mallow okra, I'd sure like to try them this summer.

Sorry Rose, no seed. only plants and that is difficult, the two plants have to be joined at exactly midnight on the dark of the moon in a hollow stump that holds a gallon jug of moonshine. You will see them advertised from time to time in those newspaper flyers. That is why they are so expensive. Shoe is in charge of the mallows.

roseone
Need some chickens? Try planting some of them "Easter Egg" radishes, and let them hatch. Best results will be with a radish incubator.

Please keep the pomaters and send the moonshine, I'll share it with the family of Jackalopes that show up here once in a while.

Reminds me of the farmer who's family liked drumsticks so much, that he breed a strain of 3 legged chickens. Never got to try them though, cause they were too fast to catch.

See where an innocent question from Sequee takes us? I'm definitley planting some easter egg radishes so the chicks will be big enough when it's time to harvest the taters.

Careful...just don't plant eggs! I planted a long row of extra eggs one year and had so many eggplants I couldn't harvest it all! Had to feed most of the pickin's back to the chickens!

Shoe.

And to think my grandparents always taught us to respect the sage advice of experienced farmers..............

Hah! Too funny, Mermaid!

I'll be sure to let ya'll know which character within me is typing in the future! Either the farmer, the storyteller, or the jokester, or the, the, whatever else is brave enough to pop out!

Shoe.

coyote trickster?

Hehehe...well, maybe in bits and pieces! But I promise to behave! :>)

Where in all heck did I leave my hip waders? I do believe I'm gonna need them.

Sorry , you will need chest waders in this crowd.

To late for waders best hope now is for a clothes pin . Thats the truth now and I am sticking to it. Ernie the truthful one LOL.

Ernie, I think you had better opt for th extra heavy clothespin

yes supersized LOL.

OK Shoe, FarmerD, here's a "dumb snipe question" for you in the interest of better understanding the English language. In the allusion to "snipe hunting on Valentines day", was the "snipe" in question a small wading bird, a small sailboat, or a mythological creature? I had a friend visiting from down South last week. She nearly busted a gut laughing at this thread. When she caught her breath enough to speak, she informed me that my aquatic heritage had led me astray, that you were not taking potshots at the small boats I used to sail or shorebirds.

http://www.snipe.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snipe

Mermaid,
Trust everything you read on this thread. Snipes, like 3-legged chickens exist. And snipes are not little sailboats. They are small bird-like critters. Some have been described as having small feathers, others have been described as being covered with frilly scales. In each case the witnesses were seen to be smoking left-handed cigarettes at the time.
Best way to catch a snipe (I learned this technique 45 years ago when I was a teenager) is to get yourself a large burlap bag. Go out deep into the woods late at night. Find an open area and hold the bag open while standing perfectly still. Make a snipe sound every minute or 2. Be prepared to stand motionless til first light.
The same technique can be used to catch a 3-legged chicken. Modify it slightly. Show up in the woods only an hour prior to first light. Stand perfectly still with the bag open and make a rooster crowing sound every minute or two.
You can combine these 2 techniques by making the snipe sounds from late night til just prior to daylight, and then transitioning to the rooster crowing sound. it will increase your chances of making a catch. Please take the time to take photos of your catch. The Smithsonian is eager to hear from you.