Topic: Highest yield way of growing potatoes

[Hector]

I've been reading online and there's some views that raised beds are the best way to get high yields  per area of space available.

I tried a spud tower a few years ago and felt it was successful...but not as successful as growing in black flexible plastic pots.


A lot of comparisons are non UK based...I was wondering what experiences you folks had?

[Robert_Brenchley]

For me, raised beds are sometimes the only way to get a crop at all. I do well growing in them. I haven't tried growing in pots from seed spuds, but I find it's the best way to grow TPS plants.

[Hector]

Same here. Lots of water run off from hill so ground gets sodden. It's weird as we are Paris
Lay on gravel, so same ground is either squelchy or bone dry in summer.

Raised beds seem to get thumbs up but potato towers and growing in bags get less positive feedback.

[Robert_Brenchley]

Bags strikes me as something which could easily fail in a hot summer, due to the amount of watering that would be needed.

[Silverleaf]

Bags strikes me as something which could easily fail in a hot summer, due to the amount of watering that would be needed.

I think some varieties cope better with hot/dry weather than others.

I grew some potatoes in rotted straw bales last year and they did quite well, and were really easy to dig out.

[Deb P]

My raised beds warm up and dry out much quicker than the lower 'normal' beds, which means I could plant today when others on my site were waterlogged. I did do more prep last year though, all the beds were heavily munched with cow manure late autumn last year, they were beautifully friable and full of worms this morning when I planted all of my potatoes...

[Silverleaf]

My raised beds warm up and dry out much quicker than the lower 'normal' beds, which means I could plant today when others on my site were waterlogged. I did do more prep last year though, all the beds were heavily munched with cow manure late autumn last year, they were beautifully friable and full of worms this morning when I planted all of my potatoes...

Isn't it lovely when you have lots of worms? :)

My raised beds are a lot warmer and drier too at this time of year. I put in some sandy topsoil when I first built them and I've been adding as much compost and horse manure as I can. It's made a huge amount of difference - the surrounding grass paths are soggy and waterlogged and squelchy and slippery because the soil has so much clay, but the stuff in the beds looks like, well, actual soil! ;)

[Hector]

Raised bed it is then.
What sort of spacing and what eight of bed works for you? I usually work out spacing so from Teegee's Almanac but wondered if closer in raised beds?

[Deb P]

I put 10 tubers in an 8'x4' raised bed. I have tried 8 tubers in the past but didn't find it made any difference to overall yield. I do heavily manure the autumn before though, and grow second earlies only. I find I can then harvest some potatoes from each plant as salad size, then leave others to grow on to baking size, Charlotte is particularly good for being cropped like this.

[dlandreth]

I read somewhere that to get really large harvest you need a seed spud with lot of eyes, plant really early and earth up excessively,heaping the soil  over 1.5 metre high. Not sure how viable the method is since never tried it.

[Robert_Brenchley]

People have experimented with potatoes in containers, and say that if they're earthed up more than a foot or so it becomes counterproductive. It's probably a case of try it and see.

[Tee Gee]

I am not a great advocate of raised beds but that's perhaps because my soil is quite light so I plant deeper. Possibly I go as deep as those who use raised beds go higher, and in the end I quite possibly get similar results.
 
Plus I find that raised beds often require more manual watering as they drain more easily where as I have the natural water table as my moisture source.

Then there is the point that  I have no maintenance worries when it comes to repairing/replacing the bed edges.

But then again I can be a tad frugal as I like to keep additional work and expense to a minimum.

[Hector]

Teegee, what you say makes sense. Unfortunately we get extreme water runoff as being right at bottom of hill is a real issue.
We get a stream after sustained rain then in hot weather the opposite, as under topsoil we are on gravel.
We are gradually improving the soil but even shallow raised beds made a real difference. We are also going higher as one of family now got physical limits where digging isn't possible. So raised beds more accessible.

One day we will have all the would structure nice and crumbly :) you are on the mark about cost as filling the beds takes a lot of soil...we are composting with a vengeance.

[Hector]

Teegee, what you say makes sense. Unfortunately we get extreme water runoff as being right at bottom of hill is a real issue.
We get a stream after sustained rain then in hot weather the opposite, as under topsoil we are on gravel.
We are gradually improving the soil but even shallow raised beds made a real difference. We are also going higher as one of family now got physical limits where digging isn't possible. So raised beds more accessible.

One day we will have all the would structure nice and crumbly :) you are on the mark about cost as filling the beds takes a lot of soil...we are composting with a vengeance.

The pots were fun and we tried a tower.but we seemed to proportionally do just as well with pots.

[Silverleaf]

Well I have horrible heavy clay that takes forever to dry out and become workable. Raised beds help a lot with that.

[Jeannine]

I have tried, buckets , bags, totes  and  my garden  which is all  is raised wooden sided beds.   Really big pots with just one tuber planted on about 4 inches of soil worked best for me, then as the green comes up keep covering it till the bucket it full. I have only done it with salad types and the yield has varied depending on the variety but it has been good. Bags dried out on me despite watering all the time. One year I sat the bags on a raised bed with a drip system and that worked very well. I may have just got the same yield as in the beds but harvesting was a dream and no tubers left.

There is a very big move going on over this side of the pond to get folks to get back to growing. Community plots are in great demand but are usually only about 10 feet by twenty, so towers, bags etc are being sold instead. The cost however is very high so unless you made your own or only wanted a few it would be too much. I think it is a bit like the upside down tomato planters of a few years ago, someone has seen a market and is going for it, and of course in a country so big as the US or Canada, the weather variations are so huge it may work better is some areas.

Overall I would say raised beds but I am growing some in pots this year as I don't have enough bed space so anything that will go in a pot is a bonus and there is plenty to choose from as miniature  or pot/patio veggies  are all the rage here!!!

By the way there is probably a lot of US info on growing in tubs on You tube but remember about the weather variations.

XX Jeannine