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Tater Questions

R

rustyacres sd

Member
Growing up and still today, have always planted the taters on 38 or 40 inch row centers. What is the closest spacing any of you guys use and what problems does it cause. Thinking about doing 30" spacing maybe ever closer. Work the garden with the MF 135 and have an Idea on makeing a potatoe plow to help harvest them.
 
We plant at 26 inch rows, the 135 with the wheels set out one hole either side at the front and the back wheels set at 52 inch centres works well at this width. We have a ferguson potato drill plough and planter box for this tractor. The plough pics are library photos, and the potato pics are from my garden last year.I planted the last week of Feb and started digging on last week of June
Sam
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I plant on 36" rows. I use a Farmall Super C with the front mounted universal brackets that allow me to open up the trench with middle buster,, cultivate/fertilizer side dresser and then hill up with disc hillers.

This is all for an big garden. I hand plant 20lbs of seed potatoes and hand dig.
 
I have a troy built horse tiller and it's 18" wide and I make my ridges with the furrower attachment and it spaces the rows about 22-26 inches apart. But I do dig them by hand here at home but we have used a couple of antique diggers at the show after I ridged them at that spacing. We have to hitch the diggers to the side of the tractor drawbar and just go around the outside rows. People go crazy for the potatoes at the show. We furnish the plastic bags and they take all they can carry for no cost to them.
 
Rusty........fer my home garden, I plant WHOLE potatoes in STRAW inside stack of 3-tires and drip irrigate. You do NOT haffta cut yer seed potatoes. Do NOT use store bought taters fer seed potatoes 'cuz they've been dipped to keep the eyes from sprouting. ........Dell
 
I use 30 inch rows. My BCS tiller is 22 inch.I used 36 inch rows for years with a larger tiller.I do not cut seed and plant from my own saved seed.I plant Kennebec,Katahdin,Red Norland and Satina.I dig by hand.
 
The potatoes from the grocery store may or may not have been treated with sprout inhibitor- but for those that have, it is actually a gas that is ducted into the storage barn and recirculated through the pile with forced ventilation.
as to row spacing, when we did potatoes commercially, we used 36" rows. 34" were and are very common also. i've never heard of less than 34. i think the reason has to do with machinery though- you have to leave enough space between the rows so you can get a tractor tire through without trampling the crop. Also, the final cultivation or "hilling" throws up a lot of dirt and it has to come from somewhere-the tire track.

hope this helps.
 
I always planted them in 36 inch rows, but I see no reason why you can not use 30 inch rows. For years I used a Standardtwin garden tractor for cultivating. I now use a Troy Bilt tiller. When I bought my Wards garden tractor in 1971 I used it for plowing the garden and making my furrows for potatoes. I also used it for plowing out the potatoes. I had plenty of help for scratching out the spuds. My wife, daughter, MIL would help. I would help too before making another pass. It's hard to believe that we ate all those potatoes. Should've had a potato digger. Hal
 
We plant in 4'x12' raised bed boxes. Loosen the soil wit spading fork. Put the sets in 8"oc., just push in with fingers, total of 50 sets per box. cover them with two layers of news paper and 4" layer of oat straw. Three boxes yields all the spuds we need for the two of us each year. Spuds in the three boxes behind the peas.
Loren, the Acg.
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A row what the heck is that LOL. I have never planted them in rows but I also do not plant a whole lot of them. All I do is drop the taters in the area I want them in and then cover with hay or straw
 
No fertilizer used, but these are my first earlies and will grow much more...but hey its just too great a temptation to get the first spuds of the new season!
Sam
 
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