Poor potato yield: shall I give up?

Yorky

Having had poor yields of potatoes over the first twoo years of growing them, I made sure I was going to get it right this time - or so I thought.

I prepared the raised bed at the end of last October by spreading a few inches of well rotted donkey and horse manure over it ( full of worms so plenty of nutrients).

The seed potatoes- Unwin's organic 'Colleen' - already had good bud formation but I chitted them for another week anyway.

Immediately prior to planting, the raised bed was covered with more manure. They were planted on 4th April with 30cm row and seed spacing - a total of 21 seed potatoes (about 1.25 kg). They were planted 15cm deep with the soil/manure mounded up over them at time of planting and then once more after that.

They were well watered once or twice a week and given a liquid feed every 10 days or so.

They were harvested between the 18th and 24th July and the total yield was 8.7kg, which is very disappointing.

Can anyone explain why the yield might have been poor?

mags16

Hi there. I have potatoes growing in bags and I harvested the first one tonight. I had seen youtube videos where people only got a couple of spuds from each bag so I was delighted that the yield was respectable. I got 1.662 Kg from 3 seed potatoes. How does that compare to your yield?

dardevle

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what kind of numbers did you get from each plant?... colleen being a first early are never going to give you a large yield in terms of weight but you should be getting 10-15 spuds from each plant.... also i would have being inclined to leave them in the ground for around 4 months at least, because of the weather conditions we had at planting time and the late frost damage experienced in May.... i planted my Queens on the 25th march and just began harvesting this past weekend.



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mags16

I've just done a quick calculation. You achieved approx 0.4kg per plant and I got 0.55kg per plant. Not much difference there.

Mothman

What size were the potatoes?
There may be an issue of expectation. That yield does not seem bad for the area planted for a first early variety.

Corsendonk

The answer seems to be in the seed you selected. Organic seed is not always the strongest seed available. Colleen is a first early cultivar but does not yield many tubers even from conventional seed. Its also not really a great flavour potato.

Try to source a cultivar like the tried and trusted Homeguards which also has a decent sized crop for first earlies. Avoid Premier at all costs, worse taste than Colleen. Also stressing the plants a little can encourage them too start producing tubers. A little too much care just encourages more foilage growth.

So you might as well go for 3rd time lucky!

reilig

I use the sarpo mira variety which is blight resistant. They aren't ready for digging yet - I won't dig until the stalks die down. Last year out of 15kg of seed we had a crop of over 170kg. We kept them in a "pit" and they weren't affected by the hard winter. Had almost 30kg of seed from them. They received no spray or fertilizer - just cow manure. Its looking like a bumper crop again this year judging by the height of the stalks.

Yorky

reilig wrote: »

I use the sarpo mira variety which is blight resistant. They aren't ready for digging yet - I won't dig until the stalks die down. Last year out of 15kg of seed we had a crop of over 170kg. We kept them in a "pit" and they weren't affected by the hard winter. Had almost 30kg of seed from them. They received no spray or fertilizer - just cow manure. Its looking like a bumper crop again this year judging by the height of the stalks.

I had intended to go for those next year due to their strong blight resistance. Are they main crop? Where did you get them from?

dfbemt

Yorky wrote: »

I had intended to go for those next year due to their strong blight resistance. Are they main crop? Where did you get them from?

I planted these in bags and have had a few sneak peeks. Looks like there is a bumper crop bursting to get out.

I got my sarpo mira from the Mr Midleton shop. A bit pricier than others but worth it for the blight resistance.

reilig

Yorky wrote: »

I had intended to go for those next year due to their strong blight resistance. Are they main crop? Where did you get them from?

We have about 1/4 of an acre of them sown which will be divided between 3 houses in our family. I bought them from the organic shop in bray in spring 2009 (its gone out of business now) and I kept the seed from last year's to this year. They are a pleasure to grow, no blight. The stalks grow so fast that they cover the bed and prevent weeds from coming up too. 15kg of seed cost €30 including delivery.