) - Welcome, I'm Joey Baird. - And I'm Holly Baird.
- And we are the founders of
https://thewisconsinvegetable gardener.com/
a website for all levels of gardeners
no matter where you're located at in the world.
And today we're going to talk about
growing potatoes in containers and the ground.
Now, how many of you have grown potatoes,
or have never grown potatoes before?
Any newbies? Okay.
How many of you have grown potatoes,
but with to grow them better?
That should be the rest of you.
So we're going to go over the basics.
We've gardened a combination between Holly and myself
for 25 years.
Some of you may be far beyond that
in levels of education.
This is what we have found works best for us.
And we hope that it works the best for you.
- So, what is a potato?
Well there's a difference between a potato
and a sweet potato.
A regular potato is a starchy tuberous crop
and it is from the perennial nightshade family.
Other vegetables that are in the same family
are eggplants and tomatoes.
They're similar on the nightshade family.
And the sweet potatoes actually a different type of potato
and it's more related to the morning glory family
and it's a larger, sweeter root.
- So with that being said,
growing potatoes are just about 5,000 different varieties
of potatoes in the world.
Obviously they're not all available at your local
home and garden center or through catalogs online,
but that gives you an idea of what we're dealing with
on a grand scheme of varieties.
- And, they originally are from South America,
but overtime through genetic mutation,
and through cross breeding,
now they're grown all over the world
and a lot of them are more acclimated
to different temperatures and different climates.
- Now you may hear about genetically modified crops
or potatoes.
Some, there are some of those available in the market.
You are not going to be able to purchase those
at your garden centers, or independent or online catalog,
because the big biotech companies require the big ag farmers
or those who grow genetically modified crops
or GMOs to sign contracts in which
there's a lot of agreements and a lot of stuff that goes on there,
so you're never going to be able to buy one
or plant one because they're not going to ask you
to sign something with a whole lot of legality to it.
So you don't have to worry about that.
It's just how you're going to be able to buy
certified organic seed potatoes
no matter where you go to find them.
- Now, there are some potato growing myths.
One is you cannot grow store bought potatoes.
And this is not true.
Now, you may not be able to regrow a
conventional growing potato,
but if you buy organic potatoes, you can regrow those.
- Many of the potatoes in which you purchase
from your big box grocery store
are sprayed with what is called a growth inhibitor
and that is a chemical that greatly slows down
the production of the sprouts, or the eyes
and we'll talk about in a moment,
on your potato, so it's more appealing to the buyer,
to the grocery store consumer,
and it has a better, longer shelf life.
So that's why, many times you're not going to find potatoes
that are non-organic sprouting.
There are a couple different varieties of potatoes
just like there are tomatoes.
There's determinate and indeterminate varieties of potatoes.
- And just like tomatoes,
the determinant variety is going to grow to a certain point,
and then that will be it.
It will just produce as many potatoes as it is allowed
in the plant, and that will be the end of it.
And the indeterminate variety is the long season
or the late season potatoes.
And those continue to grow throughout the season
giving you more of a harvest.
- And on the screen, on the lower portion of the screen,
it indicates some varieties in which are longer variety,
an indeterminate variety of potatoes.
So, when we talk about varieties of indeterminate
and determinate varieties,
there are what is to be said garden myths.
Now, has any of you attempted to perform any of the
growing techniques that are on the screen right now?
Whether box, tire, or cage?
Okay, any of you have any success with any of those
to the stature that you would--
Okay, some people have some success.
With our experience, what we have found
is that none of these are as successful as
regular, putting them on the ground
or in a container.
The image on the left of the screen
which is the box or the two-by-two,
four-foot-tall box you're supposed to be able to do that
and grow a hundred pounds of potatoes in it.
Well, through the gardening community on YouTube
and other individuals whom we've spoke to,
this was an article that got a little blown
out of proportion.
The initial person who posted this
got a hundred pounds of potatoes out of that box.
But what they failed to indicate
before putting it on social media becoming clickbait,
is on the next slide, you'll see what we're talking about
on the right-hand side, they planted one row of potatoes,
they began to sprout, then they put more soil on it,
and planted another row on top of that,
in which you had potatoes throughout the box.
- So the myth is,
instead of doing the two different rows separately,
you plant two rows together,
and then you're going to get them all to grow phenomenally.
And that's simply not true.
And that's not what's usually told
when you find this information online.
So it's not that simple, it is possible
but you have to do two different plantings.
- The thought process is that stalk will continue to grow
is we're all told to backfill or cover the stalk up
and more root development will occur
which will occur more tubers.
And we just simply never found that in our garden
to be true at all.
- So in our experience,
yes, this may work for some people.
You can try to modify as if you choose to,
but for the most part, growing them in a container
or the ground is what's going to get you the most yield or even a straw bale.
And growing in tires is not advisable for really any vegetable.
- Though there have been studies that prove
there's no leeching out of the chemicals into the soil,
it's a preference that you have to make for your own garden
and for those who are consuming the food
in which you grow those crops out of.
So, what are you--
What potatoes are you going to plant?
Will it really determines what's the end result
of what you're going to use the potatoes for.
- So if you're going to use it for roasting, baking,
freezing, mashing, canning, maybe there's a specific
variety you enjoy to eat,
maybe there's something that you feel is more beneficial
to you, and that's how you're going to determine
what you want to grow.
- When you go purchase potatoes at your garden center
or online, they have a description about the potato,
and it does indicate good for canning, or good for cooking.
If you're intentions are to can these, pressure can these,
don't buy a potato that says not good for canning
or doesn't mention that.
Be rational about this
and buy the potato, not because of the prettiness of it,
but for the functionality of it
and the end result of what your intentions are.
So, we use potatoes that are certified seed potatoes
from a farm from Bridgewater, Maine.
They're a family farm that's been in operation
for 41 years, and the nice thing,
there's 26 specialty variety potatoes they sell every year.
We never got a bad potato or a bad seed potato from them,
and the nice thing about that farm
is the mom and dad are passing the farm down
to their children,
and continuing the generation of farming
and they're all certified non-GMO,
and they're very anti-GMO in that manner.
So, you can get your seed potatoes from online catalogs,
independent garden centers,
that's just where we choose to grow them.
- [Holly] So there's three types of potatoes
when it comes to when you're going to plant them
or how long they take to grow.
And there's the early season, which is about 75 to 90 days,
there's the mid-season which is about 95 to 110 days,
and the late season which is the 120-135 days.
- Now, we are,
we've played around with the days and the planting.
We were able to get an early crop in,
at the normal time about late April, early May,
and then once the garlic comes out,
we were able to put another crop in
of mid varieties and get a late fall crop.
That worked very well last year
and we'll continue to practice and finesse our numbers
to where we can have several harvestings of potatoes
all summer long.
Now, chitting the potatoes, let's talk about this.
This is a way in order to speed up the development
of the potatoes tuber
and you can do it in a couple of different ways.
- So one way you can do that is
you just allow them to start their sprouts naturally,
you want to keep them out of direct sunlight,
and about a room temperature room,
and then just keep them separate from each other,
as you can use an egg carton, or even a seed tray,
and you want to do this about six weeks before planting.
- Now, by putting it in the corner in ambient light,
we don't want undergrow light or direct sunlight.
By the time that six weeks has elapsed,
you will have about maybe at best an inch sprout
on that potato.
And that simply just to increase the speed
in which the potato will root in the ground
and the sooner you can get potatoes.
- Is it necessary to chit your potatoes?
No, it's not.
It does give your potatoes a chance to
get a jump start on the growth,
but it doesn't make a difference.
If you do live in a shorter season area,
maybe more in northern Wisconsin
then you can chit your potatoes
and you would have a faster season.
- There is a number of commercial growers
that just simply take a potato and throw it in the ground
and it grows just fine.
So it's not something that's required,
but we do it in order to help speed up
and for the next reason, in a moment,
to get more seed potatoes out of each potato.
- [Holly] So this just talks about
when the sprouts get really long,
whether or not you want to cut or trim them back,
or to let them grow, and you just want to let them keep growing,
you don't want to cut them back.
- The tuber itself is the energy source,
in which the new plant will emerge from and grow.
So by removing those sprouts,
and I'm talking ones that are on the lower right-hand side
of the screen, that are one or two inches, you want to leave those alone.
Now, if you have, we've all had that, we found them in the cupboard
and they're like 16 feet long and they're all, yeah.
Those we're, start over,
but with these,
I would remove the one on the right-hand side
and leave the two on the left-hand side
and plant that potato as is,
to allow two stalks to emerge and grow properly.
What happens when you snap those off,
the energy and the tuber, if it's large enough,
it has to go through a recovery process
to regenerate that growth
and slows down the speed of the plant developing
and the harvest, but also can reduce the size
and the health of the potato as well.
- So you can cut your seed potatoes if it's large enough
and you have more than one sprout.
You don't want to cut them smaller than the size
of about a regular sized chicken egg.
So as you can see here, you have a three-ounce potato.
You don't want to cut that.
And then I'll wait to a 10 ounce or larger potato
you can get four pieces,
but you want to make sure each piece has an eye
or a sprout on it.
- Now you don't have to cut them as we indicated earlier,
you can simply throw them in the ground
but this is an advantage to increase the number of plants
that you'll have in your garden or your containers.
Studies have shown whether you plant the whole potato,
or you cut it up and divide it,
the yield is the same either way.
You're not losing or gaining any additional yield per plant,
what you're gaining is additional plants
in order to make your row fill out better
or get more in each row or container.
So that's a way that we can stretch the dollar
of the seed potatoes in which we have purchased.
- Now when you do this, you want to make sure you let them sit for a day or two
before you plant them, so they get the nice scab
over the cut portion.
But you can also sulfur, do an agricultural sulfur on them,
which is called dusting.
We don't do this, but some people do.
- And you can dust them with sulfur the day
if you're cutting it and planting it today you can do that right now.
Just leaving it over that two or three-day period will callus over,
and kind of put a hard shell just like a wound you would have on your arm,
and really prevents a lot of diseases, insects, bugs,
from burrowing in and eating the inside of your potato
which decreases the number of potatoes that you grow,
because the bugs have ate it.
So that's what we do. And either way it works fine.
- So now you're ready to plant your potatoes.
You need to think about when and where
you want to plant them.
And so, the key is you want to have full sun.
And that means about six to 12 hours of sun per day.
You want to make sure that when you plant your potatoes,
that you have a minimum soil temperature of 45 degrees.
That doesn't mean 45 degrees ambient air temperature.
That means if you take a thermometer, put it into the soil
a couple of inches down, and then that soil is 45 degrees.
- 50 degrees is the best temperature to start with.
We've done 45 for the last several years, worked very well.
And to acquire that temperature,
the ordinary meat thermometer out of the kitchen
works very well.
It's usually about a minimum of six inches in thickness.
You can shove it in and get a good root temperature,
root zone temperature, just be sure you clean it
before you give it back to your wife
and she use it for something else.
But it works very well, you get an instant reading
and you know what it's at.
But again, ambient temperature means nothing.
Many vegetables across the board that your planting,
it all revolves around that root zone at temperature,
whether or not the plant's going to succeed or not.
So, when to plant and where to plant.
Well obviously we want well-drained soil,
whether it's in a ground or container.
We want to avoid heavy clay soil
because that dense soil will hamper the development
or the largeness of the tubers
and you want to plant two weeks
before your last average frost date.
And you can find that by talking to your local extension office
or just going to your favorite search engine
and typing in last average frost state,
insert your zip code there,
and that's an average of over the last 10 years
of calculations.
If you're concerned about pH, you can do a pH test.
Send it to the local university for a small fee
and you can get detailed information
whether you need to add or take away or what you need to do
to increase the fertility of the soil.
But four-eight, six-five is the optimal range.
Most gardens are about six-five, seven-two,
somewhere in that range
for a general understanding on what pH is
and where some people are setting at.
- So we talked about the time of the plant,
but you just want to make sure you have a nice loose
and loamy soil for your potatoes.
- Full sun again, as much as you can give it preferably.
Organic matter is important.
We're going to talk about the fertilizers
that are required to help increase
the benefits of the potato.
But if you can continue to pour good organic matter
into your garden, your raised beds, your containers,
that is obviously a good thing.
Dry grass clippings, upper left corner,
we used certified leaf compost.
Upper right,
shredded leaves, dry leaves
we try to capture all the leaves in the fall
on both sides of the house and across the street,
the neighbors are more than happy to
put them in the street for us,
as well as used coffee grounds
will also increase the fertilization of your garden.
Coffee grounds are 2% nitrogen
and 0.2% phosphorous and 0.7% potassium,
and you don't have to purchase them,
you can get them at your local coffee shop, just call ahead.
They're more than happy to allow you to bring a bucket in
fill it within a day, and they're happy to see it go
because it's not going to the landfill.
And you mix it in to your garden.
I would go about a pound every two or three square feet
and you can even kind of play with that
based on how bad the soil is
and what you're trying to accomplish.
- So the best weather for your potatoes would be
where the daytime temperatures are about 60-65 degrees.
And at night below 57 degrees.
This is not always possible,
but that is the ideal temperature
for a potato growing condition.
- That is what the book says, would be perfect
if we could have the world that we can control.
But it's not so, when the weather is hot,
the top of the plants can
wilt and not produce very well.
We don't have to worry about this in Wisconsin
that much, but in other southern states,
if the soil temperature reaches 85 degrees Fahrenheit,
the plant dies off.
I've never seen 85 degree soil
so we don't have to worry about that here.
But there are some states in which that is a concern.
And the biggest potato producing state is Idaho
and they have cool summers and nights
and that's why they are one of the leading producers
of potatoes in the country
because they got optimal soil and great temperatures.
- So when you're putting your potatoes in the ground,
you want to plant them about,
we plant our about six to eight inches down
into the soil
and about nine to 12 inches apart.
- [Joey] Now on the screen there, on the left-hand side,
it's a traditional trench method.
Six inches deep, the eyes are pointing up on the potato,
that seems common sense, but some people get excited
and just throw them on the ground
and you got to have the eyes pointing skyward
otherwise they don't grow that well.
The center picture is--
I went ahead and created the furls
like we're all familiar with, the hilling-up process.
Then I went through with the post hoe digger
and simply dug down six inches
and dropped potatoes in each hole.
Experimented with it, worked very well
and then re-hilled up on the right-hand side of the screen.
Both produced fairly well potatoes.
So either way, it's how much work you want to put into it
is what it comes down to.
So now, we're going to talk about the fertilization
or the fertilizer that is needed for your potatoes
and what is recommended.
- So you want to get a fertilizer
with a higher potassium and phosphorus...
- [Joey] ...numbers.
- [Holly] Numbers compared to the nitrogen content.
- That is the second and third number on your fertilizer bag.
Nitrogen is always the first.
- And then later in the season, you can fertilize them again.
We haven't done this, but we're going to try it this summer
to see if it makes a difference.
- And you can just use an all purpose
organic fertilizer or inorganic fertilizer
based on your growing beliefs.
Whenever you get to that organic fertilizer,
basically most plants won't pick up more than a
five-five-five, in that range,
five to nine is about your average organic level.
When you see the fertilizers, the triple 15 or the triple 20
those are synthetic fertilizers
because there's no such thing as those type of numbers
that can be organically created in nature.
- And then you can mix in a solid organic fertilizer.
And as we've mentioned,
you want to check the plant mid-season if you choose to,
and then add extra fertilizer if the leaves are looking
slightly yellow or if you don't
it seems like they're growing very well.
- As well as you can add compost, rotted manure.
Do not use fresh manure because you will kill your plants.
Most animal, horse animal manure, cow manure
is very high and has a hot nitrogen in it
will just burn your plants up.
So you want it to age for a year
and put it in through a good composting process.
And it has great nutrients,
but you have to use it when it's appropriate time.
You just can't throw it right in your garden.
- So, this past season,
we tried something called no dig potatoes.
And it was-- - [Joey] It worked very well.
On the left-hand side of the screen,
we took an experimental patch of
two-foot-wide by three feet long,
added one inch of compost as a bedding material.
Right hand side of the screen,
I went ahead and spaced the potatoes nine to 12 inches apart
added the requirement, the correct fertilizer requirements
on the back of the package,
and then we went ahead and covered the potatoes
with regular leaves, dry grass, clipping shredded paper,
yard debris, whatever we had,
about 18 to 20 inches high.
And throughout the summer, I continued to try to find materials
in that range to cover them up
and they sprouted, they grew much better.
These are finger link potatoes.
They grew much better than the finger links we had in the ground,
and when it was time to harvest we simply just raked back the leaves
picked the potatoes up and put them in the box
and walked in the house with it.
Worked very well, very low maintenance,
and we will continue to exercise and try different methods
of no dig this coming year.
- And there were no weeds.
- Very minimal weeds with that that procedure.
So that's something that maybe you're not a big fan
of digging a lot,
that may be one way to go about going with a no dig method.
So now, we're going to talk about container gardening.
And this may be a way, again, easier than to traditionally
dig a trench, or bury them in the ground.
- Not that many people realize you can grow potatoes
in a container, but it is very possible.
So what you want to do is you want to take your container
and you fill it about a third of the way
with a good potting soil compost,
and then you plant your potatoes,
and then you fill it back up
with the rest of the compost or soil.
- We're not worrying about topping it off
every time the sprouts emerge through the ground,
through the soil,
because we believe there is no proof
that putting more sprouts on the stalk
creates more potatoes.
So that's why we go about this way.
So here's a rough guide of how many potatoes you can put
in a grow bag container bucket.
And with any device that you're growing your potatoes in,
please put holes in the bottom of them,
because potatoes can't swim and they can't breathe underwater
and they will die just like many other crops
in which we grow in our garden.
So one seed potato in a three-gallon pot.
Again, here's the key with these containers.
The larger the container, the larger the mass of soil,
the more moisture is contained in that soil,
the slower that will dry out.
So keep that in mind.
10-gallon grow bag or container,
three- to four-seed potatoes spaces evenly,
and 15-gallon, five-seed potatoes and on up.
There's many grow bags we use some 60-gallon grow bags
that work really well.
And again, place them evenly because
we have to have adequate space for the seed potatoes
to grow tubers correctly.
- So, this a little question, answer we have here.
At the time potatoes do put on flowers and they bloom,
and some people say if you cut the flowers off,
it's going to take energy away from the flower production
and put it back into the plant.
And that's not true.
Cutting the flowers off is not going to make a difference
in the growth of the potato.
- This was a big thing in the UK, several years ago.
And this is from the North Dakota State University
extension office potato specialist.
So just allow them, let the bees come in,
take the pollen they need to create honey
and enjoy the blooms.
Many varieties bloom many different colors
and that's just some of what we've had.
Now you can simply as just cut a bag of compost open
and plant your potatoes in that.
That's what we've done.
That is a two cubic foot bag of certified leave compost
which we slit down the side, laid on the ground,
and took another two cubic foot bag and topped it off,
and then simply put three seed potatoes in it,
and let it be.
Now we do want to remember to water this,
and it did work very well and at the end of the season,
you dump your compost out, pull your potatoes,
and then you're helping increase the fertilization
of the soil the next year if you're in a garden bed.
Or you can put it in a container
and save it and use it a little bit next year.
Now, here is, go ahead Holly, you can explain.
- [Holly] And then, you'll see this on your potatoes.
Your potato plants by the flowers a lot of times
and those little green balls are basically seeds.
They're potato seeds. And you don't want to eat those.
You don't want to eat the potato flowers either.
But if you see those, that's what they are.
- They're true seeds. They are extremely toxic.
So that's kind of that defense mechanism
that the potato puts on to ward off predators
from eating the top of the plant.
But each seed contains hundreds of--
Each pod contains hundreds of little seeds
in which there are gardeners that try to
and do successfully grow those seeds into mature
potato plants.
It's much easier just to take the tuber
from a certified seed potato divide it and plant it.
But we all have things that we enjoy
trying to experiment with and this is one of them.
Not all varieties of potatoes will produce
these types of seed bulbs on them.
So some will, some won't
and it also depends on the stress of the plant
during the growing season.
So again, we have to water our potatoes.
It goes without saying,
but we want to make sure the soil is damp, not soggy.
About an inch of water a week is really a good standard
to go by.
And if it's really a very warm summer,
go out there, stick your finger in the soil,
see if it feels damp, if it feels dry,
go ahead and water it, or don't water it.
It's pretty common sense,
but we want to make sure everybody's in the same level
of growing potatoes.
- Just like any other plant in your garden
there's a possibility for problems.
And we picked three common problems that people phase with
potato gardening and this one is aphids.
Aphids live in a lot of places in our garden.
What they do is they're basically like a tick on a human.
They're sucking the lifeblood out of your plants.
They're really tiny,
they're usually green or yellow,
sometimes black or brown in color.
And if you get too many of them,
they're just going to cause discoloration of the leaves
and they're just going to eat the green life out of your plants.
- Suck the green life out of your plants.
Now, you want to be very vigil about this,
because if you do have an infestation,
they can reproduce without breeding every two weeks.
So things can get out of control very very quickly
whether in your garden or in a grow room for that instance
and that's how we lost a whole bunch of peppers
two years ago, was because of the aphid infestation
and just devastated everything within just a couple of days
before we actually understood what was going on.
- And you can spray them down with a soapy
diluted water that will kill them.
Or you can spray neem oil or canola oil on your plant.
If you choose to use neem oil,
you want to make sure
that you purchase a cold-pressed neem oil.
There's a lot of neem oil at your local garden center.
And it's usually once the harvest the good parts
of the neem oil and leave the bad parts.
- The cold-pressed neem oil is how--
It's top type, the number one press of the neem oil
goes to the cosmetic industry, and then the garden industry
kind of gets some of the leftover sometimes.
But there are good reputable companies out there
that sells the cold- pressed neem oil
and that is the most effective for this type of application
in controlling the aphid insect.
And another problem we have is early blight.
- So early blight is common.
It lives in your soil and it does affect--
It can affect many of the plants in your garden,
but it does affect the nightshade family plants a little bit more.
And you know you've gotten it.
Your leaves will turn kind of a yellow color.
They'll look kind of sunken.
Sometimes they'll have brown spots on them.
And this is just something that,
if you've experienced a lot of rain,
it's because it lives in the soil
and splashing back on to your plants.
So one thing you can do to get rid of it is
to mulch around your plants.
Not necessarily get rid of it, but help prevent it,
because the mulch around your plants
it helps the rain or the water from splashing back
on to your plants.
- Also based on the type of variety of potato you're growing
some are more susceptible to early blight than others.
We found that all of our finger link potatoes last year
were susceptible and almost eradicated all of them.
The rest of the potatoes that were growing
one foot away from the fingerlings had no effect whatsoever.
So, keep that in mind.
Again, mulching is a great deterrent.
Also, like tomatoes, and potato growing,
we also apply some yellow whole grain corn meal
which has a beneficial bacteria in it
trichoderma, that helps fight that bad bacteria
which is the early blight on your soil.
And that seems to greatly reduce.
It doesn't prevent 100%,
but greatly reduces that spores
from splashing up and affecting your plant.
- And then we have late blight.
And unfortunately this does happen.
It happened to us last year to our tomato plants
very late in the season.
And you know you'll get it
because the leaves all start turning really brown
and get really brittle.
And late blight is an airborne disease.
So if you do get late blight on any of your plants,
you don't want to put them in your compost.
You don't want to give them to the city.
You just want to simply throw them in the trash.
- There are some copper fungicides
that are preventative measures or slows it down
prior to getting it, but you have to be ahead of the game.
And again, you don't want to put these in your compost pile
or the municipality
because if the spores are kept warm enough,
which is what most compost piles do over the winter
if done correctly,
they can be reintroduced into your garden
the following year,
or the municipality in which you shipped into
or gave them to the city,
somebody else has picked them up,
put them in their garden,
and it can reintroduce itself and cause more problems,
so just throw them in the trash.
Be a good gardener and help other people out
by not spreading diseases that you're aware of.
Obviously, you know what they are.
- So, when's to harvest?
When's the best time to harvest your potatoes?
You do not want to harvest them any sooner than 10 weeks.
Once you reached the 10-week point,
you should let them grow longer.
But if you want the new potatoes,
you can harvest them then.
And then you want to harvest them
after the flowers have appeared and died
and generally when the growth dies back
and the plants are starting to fall over,
look really yellow and brown,
then you know they're really ready to harvest
and the longer you let them grow, the better.
- You can harvest them early when the flowers appear.
Many gardeners will say, "the flowers appeared, I can dig the potatoes."
Your tubers are still developing
until the plant gets into that third stage
and begins to die back.
You can harvest them but we always wait
and try to get as much out of the potato as possible.
Now a good range,
or a good guide in what you should be getting
out of your garden,
about for every one pound of potatoes you put in,
most charts will say
you should get about 10 pounds of potatoes out.
That's a good range, some people will get 12 to one
or 12 pounds out for every one pound.
Some good gardeners are getting one pound,
15 pounds out for every one pound they put in.
So really determines the fertilization of your soil,
the type of potato,
the conditions that you're growing them in.
We're still building the soil in one of our gardens
and we only have a one pound in
that we planted and we get 4.6 pounds out.
So that was one garden we're working on.
We'd like to get that big turnaround,
that 15 to one ratio.
So, once we've harvest them, we've got to store them.
And there's a number of ways in doing this.
We choose to go 50-50.
Half the potatoes get stored this way
and the other half we pressure can.
- So when you harvest your potatoes before you store them,
you do not want to wash them.
Leaving that soil on your potatoes
will help keep them from rotting faster,
just kind of seals them in.
And then you want to check for damaged potatoes.
Any damaged potatoes you want to keep them out of storage,
just go ahead and eat them right away
so that you're not putting the bad potatoes in
with the good potatoes.
And then you want to keep them in a cool dry place.
In a mesh bag, a wicker basket, a paper bag,
a cardboard box, you don't want to put them in plastic.
- Now, many of us probably don't have root cellars,
but maybe we have a concrete basement or garage.
By putting them in that cardboard box
and sitting them directly on the concrete,
that actually helps slow down and cool down
the core of that potato
and just prolongs the life just a little bit longer,
to get more life out of it.
- Yes, so a garage, attic, stairs, basement.
You do not want to store them in your refrigerator.
If you put fresh potatoes
or any potatoes in your refrigerator,
it changes the sugar molecules of the potato
and turn it more into a sugar
as opposed to a starch.
- Just like you do, don't put tomatoes in the refrigerator.
It doesn't end well, it tastes horrible.
Same thing with potatoes.
So here's another question and answer that gets asked a lot.
- So what is the natural way to stop potatoes
from sprouting in storage?
You can store them with dry lavender, sage, or rosemary
and that will help slow down the sprouting of the potato.
The oils in those herbs work with the chemistry,
the potato, to help reduce the sprouting.
- Not always going to prevent it 100%,
but greatly slows it down,
so you can enjoy more of those potatoes
in which you worked hard to grow.
So another one is what causes scabby potatoes
and what do you do to solve this?
Well this is a soil born organism that develops
and you can do this--
You can do a couple of things to fix this.
Rotate the crops obviously, is one way
and those are more resistant varieties
that are on the screen above the photograph,
you can grow those.
Some of you may have a problem with the scabs.
Others may have minimal.
If you do have scabs on your potatoes
and you want to save those for seed potatoes next year,
don't do it, it's not going to work.
You're going to cause more problems by saving them.
Just peel them, and eat them
and just buy new seed potatoes next year.
- And if you do get the scabby potatoes,
what you want to do is take the area,
add some lime to it
and then leave that soil as it is for three years.
- And plant other things in that area
but then three years, you can come back
and try the potatoes again.
Well I'm Joey Baird. - And I'm Holly Baird.
- And we thank you for watching.
Thank you for your attentiveness
and best of luck on growing potatoes on your own garden.
(applause)