Harvesting potatoes

These are 2nd Early potatoes havested in early July. Being loaded into 1 ton boxes which are taken by truck to the Growers Group depot where they will be sorted and packed into small plastic bags for the supermarkets to sell.

The potato tops called haulm has been flailed off prior to harvesting. There are 2 people in the yellow hut on the back of the harvester who are doing basic sorting to remove any stones or debris. The cleaner the potatoes are going into the depot, the better price the farmer receives.

Late grown potatoes will be harvested in the same way, but they will be elevated into tipping trailers and stored in bulk in the farmers shed for sorting & bagging by his men over winter.

Very nice, Thanks for posting the pics. Bruce

Thanks for the pics. Allis Chalmers sold Opel potato harvesters re-branded for AC in the 1960's - and I was unlucky to have a bunch of them in inventory in my territory. They were not designed to work well for conditions in ND soil, so I had a hard time getting them fixed so they could be sold.

Interesting that you chop the foliage; potato growers here only get one crop a year and usually spray to de-foliate about a month before they actually dig the potatos.

Does that harvestor have an over-ride chain? Harvesting at that stage, the potatos aren't big enough to go over the chain anyway. I used to drive by the fields after harvest and pick up the large potatos that went out the back. Very good eating! Some growers used a 4" over-ride spacing and some used a 6" over-ride chain.

my grandmother would take those little ones and make a cream soup with them. It also had peas, string beans, and spaetzle noodles in it. I miss that soup! (and grandma, too)

The harvester main elevator webs are rubber coated bars which are universal size and width between them to allow the soil to fall through.

The square mesh webbs on the graders in the stores can be changed to alter the size of "rejected" potatoes to drop though.

With early & 2nd early crops of potatoes they are dug to order, the potato merchants will phone their farmer growers and say we need X tons dug today to meet the market demand. So they flail off the haulms/tops with rubber fingered flails - enough rows for the day's requirement.

Larger growers harvesting main crops at the end of the season which are going to be stored over winter will spray off the tops.

All potatoes are grown under a national quota system so that the market is not flooded with too many farmers growing too much tonnage for the required amount for British consumption. They all have to be sold through registered potato merchants who ensure quality. Some farmers will sell a few bags from the farmyard direct to the public.

There is a small specialised market here for very tiny potatoes which are sold in cans, or in meat pies. There are some farmers who plant 1st crop potatoes which are harvested in May, then re-plant immediately with 1st crop seed and they harvest these "new" potatoes late in the season which command high prices.

Right on the coast of Pembrokeshire County its very mild weather, very rare to get frosts. Tradionally this was the area where the very 1st early potatoes were grown. Sown in mid-January and harvested by hand in early May they sold for very high prices. But its labour intensive and costly, plus the part time workers dont want to be bending over and picking potatoes by hand any longer.

Very Interesting...