It won't be too long now and many of us will be thinking about planting
potatoes. So I thought I'd share with you today a little experiment I did last spring
comparing potato planting techniques. So I used four different planting methods-
the kind of traditional trench and hill method, I used a no dig method, a container planting method,
and a straw bale planting method, and I want to share the results of each with you.
Now before I show you the results I do want to add in one caveat- this was not a perfect experiment
because I ended up using a mix of different potato varieties, it was basically what I had on hand.
I had Purple Viking which is one of my long-standing favorites and then I was able
to pick up some just generic white and red seed potatoes from a local shop. Ideally I would have
had the same variety planted in every situation but even with the mix of varieties I felt like the
experiment gave me a pretty good look at how each of the different methods would perform. So let's
take a look. Now the first method I used is what I call a traditional planting method for potatoes.
It involves digging a trench, placing your cut seed potatoes in the trench,
covering them with several inches of soil and then hilling the plants as they grow.
And this method involved the most work in both the planting and the harvest.
Now as my plants grew I hilled them both with dirt and towards the end I just started adding
straw to the top of the hills to cover the plants as they grew, so when they were ready
to be harvested what I had to do was pull all of that straw back and then dig up the potatoes.
And in this planting I used my generic white seed potatoes. When it came time to harvest I got about
an average yield from most any potato I've grown through the years and it ended up being about 25
pounds for a 20-foot row. The second technique I decided to try was a no-dig method. So the
idea here is that you don't have to prep your ground before planting- you don't dig a trench.
I basically took an area of the garden that I had cover cropped over the winter, cut that
cover crop, raked it out of the way and laid my cut seed potatoes directly on the bare soil.
I then covered them with several inches of compost and topsoil and as the plants grew
I hilled them using straw and grass clippings and chopped leaves and basically whatever I had.
Now this method was incredibly easy both in the planting and the harvest and in this area I used
my standby favorite potato which is Purple Viking. And when it was time to harvest it
was incredibly easy all I had to do was peel back the layers of straw and grass and I was
basically able just to pick all the spuds off the ground. Now this method definitely had clear pros
and cons --the pros of course were that was very easy to plant and harvest the cons were
that my yields were much lower. I ended up with about 15 pounds of potatoes for 30 foot row and
this is coming from a variety I know has very high yield potential. The other big problem
was that by using all that nice straw and grass clippings I basically built a little vole hotel
so that all the voles on my property thought that they could just hide underneath there all snug
and warm and protected and nibble on the delicious potatoes that were easily accessible because they
weren't buried deep within the soil, they were just kind of sitting there amongst the straw. So I
had a lot of vole feeding damage on some otherwise really nice spuds. I'm not discounting this method
I think that if you were in a hurry just to get some potatoes in the ground this is a great way to
do it, plus I think this could work really well to break in new ground for future plantings because
you're adding a lot of organic matter and the spuds are kind of working to break up that ground.
So if you look at it as kind of a two in one it might be worth it. The next method I used was
a container planting method. So you can see the whole process in detail in the video linked above,
but basically the idea is planting spuds in a very large container. I filled a 20 gallon grow tub
up about halfway with soil, placed my cut seed potatoes, covered them with a couple inches of
compost and soil, and then filled in the grow tub with compost soil and grass clippings and mulch
as the potatoes grew. Now my grow tubs I used a mix of all three so I had Purple Vikings, red and
white seed potatoes and I had three different tubs planted. And truly of all the methods this one
is fantastic because it's a very little amount of work for a relatively high yield. So I did harvest
some of my potatoes early, so I didn't have the full potential yield when I measured them,
but I ended up averaging about five, five and a half pounds of potatoes per 20 gallon grow tub.
And while I wouldn't necessarily want to do a huge planting this way I really like this because as
I mentioned it allows me to get some potatoes in early my garden soil is often just too wet to get
in and work in the spring and I don't get potatoes in sometimes as early as I'd like, so this gives
me a little more flexibility. Plus harvesting grow tub potatoes is a lot of fun especially if you
have kids because you just get to dump the whole bucket and dig through it and find the spuds,
it's kind of like finding buried treasure. Even as an adult it's a lot of fun for me as well.
And the final method I used was planting potatoes into conditioned straw bales. So this is the
first year that I attempted a straw bale garden and most of my other veggies did really well.
This was really really easy to plant basically I just took some small seed potatoes,
made some deep holes into the straw bale, stuffed them in there, added a little compost and soil,
and let them go. This was also the easiest method to harvest because when it was time to harvest I
just stuck my hand down in the straw bales and pulled out tubers. Now I'm probably lucky that
there wasn't some little varmint with sharp teeth in there eating my potatoes when I did this but
I didn't run into any problems and ironically I didn't have any vole chewing damage on the
potatoes in the straw bales for some reason. Now for all the ease of planting and harvest
this method was the most disappointing to me. The amount of potatoes I was able to harvest
really amounted to nothing and with the straw bales they definitely leech out water
and nutrients much faster than an in-ground planting, so potatoes being a heavy feeder
you really need to be super diligent about feeding them regularly and I was not and that definitely
affected my yield. So going forward I will probably be sticking to my traditional trench and
hill method especially when I have a large amount of potatoes to plant, but I also will be doing
container plantings mainly because I really like that ability to get some potatoes in the ground
super early. And if you have a favorite method of planting potatoes that works really well for you
be sure to share it below in the comments. And if you find content like this helpful please consider
subscribing to my channel- Growfully with Jenna. Thanks for watching and I'll see you next time!