This Spud's for You, Part II

This is going to look kind of strange coming in line before Part I, but we'll go for it.

The pizza dough is rising, the flats have been watered, and I am ready to proceed. I believe our potatoes are ready to go in? Good... So we turn to the soil.

Our bed preparation for potatoes varies depending on how loose the soil already is. In the Golden Rule Garden, where the soil structure is mostly excellent, we often only do a single-dig (that's ~12" down with a digging fork) though sometimes we do double-dig the beds (24" down with spade and fork). Since potatoes are roots, they perform especially poorly in compact, rocky soil.

We don't do trenching and hilling here, just planting. We used to use a bulb planter, but that is a lot of up-and-down, and sometimes does not put them far enough under. (The funny thing about potatoes is that the tubers grow up from the original material. The seed potato is planted, the shoot comes up, and the potatoes develop along this shoot. This is why hilling and many other stranger procedures are popular - the plant grows, you bury it, it grows more, you bury it, and it grows more, all the while producing potatoes. Then when it is done growing you have to dig as deep as the original material to harvest all your potatoes.)

Anyway, how about a picture?These are the tools we use when planting potatoes: first the digging board, which helps distribute the planter's weight to avoid compacting the soil. Next, the spacing board at the top of the bed. This board is as long as the bed is wide, and is marked at 9" intervals, which are offset on the other side of the board. You would notice, upon drawing a line between the markings, that they formed equilateral triangles. This is no coincidence. With the intensive spacing used in Grow Biointensive (also referred to as "offset" or "hexagonal" spacing) all plants in the bed are equidistant from their direct neighbors. Ok, I'll get back to the planting board in a minute.

Next up is the shovel. Specifically a trenching spade. I used to call it a tree spade until I learned that a tree spade is actually the hydraulic truck-mounted hunk of steel that can dig up and move full-grown trees. So don't use one of those, use a trenching spade instead. The glory of this tool is its long, curved blade (to which the angle of the photo doesn't do justice).

Last of all is the little stick you see there next to the spade, which is a 6" spacing stick. How to Grow More Vegetables recommends that potatoes go six inches down, and the stick is to measure the depth if you want. Deeper than 6" is good, too.

We go about the whole process like this:

Start at one end, lay the planting board where the first row goes, and plunge the spade in. Pull slightly back and up, and put the potato in the hole the spade made. Pull the spade out, and the hole caves in. Nice! Plant the rest of the row in the same way, and when that is all done, flip the planting board over. The markings on the far side should indicate where the previous row's potatoes were planted, and the markings on the near side indicate where the next row should go. So do that row, flip the board towards you, plant that row, repeat... And if you are working with another person it becomes even easier. One stands with the spade, one squats with the potatoes. Works real good.

We cover the bed with a shade net then to protect the soil until the potatoes come up, and then we raise the shade net on sticks to protect the potato foliage. Some of the really hot days can scorch them back, so we figure any added bit of protection is worth it.

The other quirky thing we do is, with stakes and string, trellis the foliage of the plants. This keeps the plants vertical, out of the way of the path and each other. Additionally, you know the tubers are ready to harvest when the plant dies back and flops over (see left), so by holding them up we hope to keep the plants going just a bit longer...
When they eventually do kack, it's time to see what you've got! This is what Margo enjoys the most about root vegetables: it is always a surprise, and you can never be quite sure what you have until you dig. We use a potato fork, which is a lot like a digging fork except that the tines are wider - good for lifting potatoes instead of stabbing them. I'm sure later in the season I'll have a lot to say about this process. For now I'll note that we go through each bed at least twice when harvesting, and still find potatoes popping up the next year.
How to Grow More Vegetables lists an intermediate yield for potatoes of 200 lb per 100 sq. ft. One of our beds last year did that well, and we are counting on better this year. The gophers can surely only eat so much, right? If we do get intermediate yields, or better, for our crop it will mean 1,500 lb of happiness! That's what I'm talking about!
I guess I could say a bit here about storage. There are some potatoes that store better than others, and so you should have an idea of what you are growing them for. And if you want to be able to store your potatoes from harvest all the way to planting the next year, well, that will take really knowing your varieties together with some of your own experience. There are always some bitter (and smelly) failures, but success is oh, so succulent! Especially with some salt, a little roasted garlic, a bit of mayonnaise...