Rules For The Preparation And Planting Of Potato Tubers

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

Preparing for planting potatoes

A site for growing potatoes is chosen in advance, taking into account crop rotation and with a high agricultural background. Cultures must be alternated: potatoes must return to their original place no earlier than 3-4 years, which frees the soil from pathogens of many fungal and bacterial diseases.

The best precursors for potatoes are legumes (beans, peas, etc.), cereals (for example, winter rye grown as green manure), beets, virgin lands (in the latter case, wireworms are possible). Crops such as cabbage, carrots, peppers, cucumbers, tomatoes are undesirable, since they are affected by the same diseases as potatoes (soft rot and late blight).

Gardener's guide

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Some gardeners, in order to get a very early harvest of tubers, specially select a well-heated piece of land from which snow melted early.

High-quality preparation of tubers and timely planting of potatoes largely determine the future harvest of this crop. The best option for planting when the soil of the site has been dug up in the fall, with the incorporation of the full rate of manure (up to 10 kg per square meter). On heavy soils, you can also apply 2/3 of phosphorus-potassium fertilizers in the fall - superphosphate (it will dissolve for a long time even in wet soil), potassium chloride (so that chlorine, undesirable for potatoes, is washed out).

If in the fall the digging was carried out on a shovel bayonet, then in the spring it is done at 1 / 2-3 / 4 of the previous depth, so as not to turn the weed seeds back to the soil surface, embedded to a depth. Mineral nitrogen and 1/3 of phosphorus-potassium fertilizers are applied under the spring digging of the site or during planting. On light soils, it is preferable to apply both organic and mineral fertilizers in the spring. It is advisable to use both mineral and organic fertilizers for planting.

The soil is prepared as it ripens, when it warms up at the planting depth to + 6 … + 8 ° С, and the lump thrown from the shovel will crumble. When digging, the rhizomes of weeds are carefully selected (especially perennial wheatgrass, which is a favorite "dish" for the larvae of click beetles, pink thistle and field thistle) and wireworm larvae, and stones are removed.

The dug soil is left for 1-3 days (depending on weather conditions) to "breathe" so that the layer of soil turned out to be "warmed" before planting, but it should not be allowed to dry seriously, so that the moisture necessary for the initial germination of tubers does not evaporate. The prepared soil should be loose (fine crumbly), well permeable to water, air and heat, in order to create optimal conditions for tubers during the first growing season for the rapid development of a powerful root system and aboveground mass.

To prevent potatoes from getting into cold soil, you can cover it with a black film to warm it. It can also cover an already planted area for a week. Furrows are placed from north to south.

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Planting tubers

When planting at an earlier date, the tubers are sealed with well-sprouted material 4-5 cm so that the potatoes do not fall into unheated soil. With a normal planting, the depth of potato embedding in the soil is 7-8 cm - the distance from the top of the tuber to the soil surface is considered, and on light (sandy and sandy loam) soils it is increased to 8-10 cm. Small tubers are planted to a depth of 4-5 cm The distance between the rows is 70 cm, in a row - 30 cm. If the variety is characterized by large tubers, and you need to get a sufficient amount of seed for future planting, the distance between the tubers is reduced to 20 cm.

For effective reproduction of an interesting variety of potatoes, you can plant strong green sprouts of tubers (preferably 7-8 cm in size) in open ground (in well-fertilized soil) with a slope of 30 degrees to the soil surface, leaving their top 1-2 cm long above the soil. They are shaded from direct sunlight for 3-5 days (you can make a small frame - wire arcs and cover with plastic wrap) and watered abundantly with water.

Planting potatoes in open ground with seedlings is done when the likelihood of its damage by recurrent cold is excluded. Such small plants start growing immediately and quickly adapt to field conditions after planting. Bushes grown from cuttings form up to 3-5 tubers with a total weight of up to 0.5 kg, and they contain significantly less bacterial and viral infection than the crop obtained from whole tubers.

The planting of potatoes with segments (dividing) the tuber should also be mentioned, but in my opinion it is better to avoid this, since the tubers are seriously injured). Before planting, large tubers are divided into 3-5 parts so that at least 2 buds or sprout remain on each piece. The cut sites are dusted with ash and dried in the shade until a crust forms. After cutting each tuber, the knife should be disinfected in a strong solution of potassium permanganate to avoid the possible transfer of bacterial and fungal infections.

However, in some cases, it is still impossible to avoid rotting of the tuber cut before planting or in the soil. But it is still better not to use cut tubers as planting material - such potatoes are more affected by diseases and damaged by pests, it is even preferable to plant them with sprouts.

Potato varieties

Now the trading network offers for sale to the population at least 60-65 varieties, including Dutch, Finnish, Polish, German and others, as well as Belarusian and Ukrainian selection. By the way, according to Leningrad specialists, most Dutch varieties are very strongly affected by late blight, Finnish varieties show very weak resistance to this disease (it was not for nothing that the Finns "bought" the Nevsky variety for breeding from us), and German varieties are clearly inferior to Russian ones. Incidentally, domestic experts believe that the offensive of foreign varieties on the domestic market has the character of aggressive expansion, and the entrepreneurship of exporting farmers is actively encouraged by their governments, while no one supports our producers.

The gardener should be used for planting 4-5 varieties (of which two are necessarily nematode-resistant), preferably zoned and of different early maturity. If you have purchased several tubers of a particularly valuable breeding variety, I advise you to plant them in a separate place.

Tubers for planting should be 30-50 mm in diameter, of high varietal purity and germination, rehabilitated from viral and bacterial infections. Tubers must be warmed up or vernalized, planted with well-formed eyes, with short and strong shoots.

To obtain food and seed lots of the crop, the density of planting potatoes and the subsequent stalk is calculated. For this, tubers are selected for planting, on which at least five eyes have sprouted, which means that five main stems will develop.

To obtain a full-weight crop, the row spacing for early - mid- season varieties is recommended 65-70 cm (for late 75-80 cm) with a distance between tubers of 30 cm, i.e. there are 450-500 tubers per 100 m2. For the sake of insignificant saving of land, one should not make too narrow row spacing of 45-50 cm: this makes it difficult to huddle with loose soil, and the developing roots are pruned during hilling, as a result of which the plants lag behind in growth and development, and later and weaker form a crop. In addition, due to a lack of soil, tubers become bare and green, which is unacceptable when obtaining ware potatoes.

You should not use random or your own low-quality (degenerated due to many years of use) potatoes for planting. It is better to purchase planting material of high reproduction or use tubers from the autumn planting selection.

Since many Russians are forced to meet their needs for potatoes by planting on their land, it is possible to roughly determine the area for potatoes and calculate the future "theoretical" yield (while serious planting maintenance during the growing season and pest and disease control are required). Depending on personal needs, potatoes are allocated on their site 2-4 acres, and sometimes up to 10-20 acres or more. In principle, a family of 3-4 people needs about 500 kg of potatoes per year. This is taking into account the stock of the seed fund for the next year (with an average yield of 120-180 kg per one hundred square meters).

It should also be taken into account that potatoes are a light-loving plant that is not planted between perennial fruit trees in order to get a fairly full-fledged crop. You can try to roughly calculate the potential harvest needed for a family, which can be obtained from 1-1.5 ares and even half a hundred. High-quality (elite) planting material of a productive variety allows you to get a yield of 4-8 centners per hundred square meters and more. Even when growing potatoes on sandy soils with a good agricultural background, but using a virus-free, elite, well-varied material, you can get 500 kg or more from a hundred square meters. When calculating the needs of mineral fertilizers, you should know that 500 kg of tubers yield 2.5-3 kg of nitrogen, 3.5-5 kg of potassium, 1 kg of phosphorus from the soil.

If you plan to get an early harvest of potatoes, then it is preferable to use early varieties of crops than early planting. It has been verified by experiments and practice that potatoes planted in unheated soil sit in it for a long time without signs of development, then germinate slowly, and its shoots are more often than usual affected by rhizoctonia (the tips of the shoots turn black and often die without leaving the soil surface). Often, potatoes planted much later overtake early plantings.

The early varieties include the varieties Lark, Priekulsky early, Belorussky early, Zhukovsky early, Isora, Vesna, Vesna white, Bullfinch, Dutch varieties: Fresco, Latona, and mid- early varieties - Detskoselsky, Elizaveta, Nevsky, Reserve, Svitanok Kievsky, Rozhdestvensky, from foreign - Adretta, Romano, Santa, Nikita, Lisette and others.

For enthusiastic potato growers who want to get a second crop of potatoes (two-yield crop) in the same area, early and mid-early varieties are better suited, in which the receipt of marketable production of tubers (economic early maturity) is 55-65 and 65-80 days, respectively. Then, when planting potatoes, the row spacing is 80 cm, the distance between the tubers is 30 cm. When the plants reach the beginning of flowering and the second (last) hilling is carried out, the rows of tubers of the second harvest are planted in the middle of the row spacing. When harvesting potatoes of spring planting, plants of the second planting date are simultaneously spud.

The optimal date for the end of planting potatoes according to the national calendar is the formation of a full leaf of poplar.

But it is advisable to start the fight against the Colorado potato beetle from the end of April - beginning of May, i.e. long before planting potatoes. In the area where potatoes are going to be placed, pre-germinated tubers are planted. The overwintered hungry beetles greedily attack young shoots - they are easy to collect and destroy. Before and after planting, potatoes can be laid out (in low containers, on the bottom of which a little water is poured) along potato beds, potato peelings or tubers cut into pieces. Distinguished by a high sensitivity to the smell of freshly cut potatoes, nearby beetles arrive and gather in this container, from which they are then selected and destroyed.