Tater question

[Wellspring]

I have some of Tom"s taters growing  -  some of them have died back next to others that are still growing. Is it ok to keep watering that area?  In general, can I leave died-back taters in the ground to resprout later?

[Tom Wagner]

Normally, one would harvest the mature potatoes...the ones that died down...within a period of time.  Allowing them to stay in the ground to re-sprout is OK if you wish to leave them in the ground to grow next year.  The dormancy period of potatoes, (the resting period) is anywhere from three months to about 5 months is the soil is warm enough.  Cold weather makes the dormancy period longer.

If these potatoes are for replanting or for eating.......my answers would be different.

Tom Wagner

[opsec]

Ok, so if the ground they are in freezes, will that kill the potatoes off entirely or will they still grow back next summer? If these potatoes were for replanting, what would you do different?

[Tom Wagner]

Case in point.

Atash and I dug potatoes last fall just before a spell of hard freezing weather in the Lake City area of Seattle, Washington.  I thought we got all of the tubers and with the temps down around 9 degrees F. shortly thereafter, I did not expect the raised beds to have any chance of volunteers.  I was wrong.  The beds are full of volunteers of first year seedlings of the 2009 crop.  I dug into a few of them to show my guests from Holland and even I was impressed of the yields.  The plants came from quite a distance down in the soil, probably over a foot deep.

These raised beds are full of compost and did not need to be cultivated at all, hardly any weeds.  It just goes to show how in milder climates, potatoes can be grown sustainably....plant...harvest partly and allow the deep set tubers to be part of next year's crop.  I recognized the varieties by names since the colors were alternated with reds, red flesh, blues, whites, pinks, golds, russets, etc.  The fact that many of these strains descended from many generations of leaving the tuber lines in the ground all winter, is just plain serendipity.

[Atash Hagmahani]

Lake City is unlikely to have hit 9F. All of Seattle sits between the Sound on one side and a deep lake (Lake Washington...clever name...everything is named after Washington or Columbus around here...) on the other. As a result, all that water buffers the temperatures. It is also a hilly city as a result of which cold air tends to drain well, and there is a significant "urban heat-island" effect.

Last time it hit single digits was probably around 1955. That's the year Sea-Tac hit zero, but downtown was around 9F.

My yard hit 19F which was enough to kill a lot of plants that had survived decades of winters.

That said it was so freakishly cold that both Tom and I were shivering pretty badly. I thought I was more than sufficiently dressed for the weather, having thin long underwear on and a light jacket. That's usually more than enough for November. Oh, I think I had a sweatshirt too, because I remember loaning something to Tom. Tom was in waders and a flannel shirt, which was not enough.

We took a break from the cold to have a hamburger I think it was.

The really amazing survival story was that of the potatoes in the upper Skagit Valley. Although the elevation is surprisingly low for that deep into the mountains--only a few hundred feet I seem to recall--it gets much colder out there than it does in the city. The valley probably traps cold air pockets. The worst of the cold had already hit and wiped out the vast majority of the potatoes. The field is full of a wet, heavy, sticky clay. You can imagine what it would be like to work such soil in January!!

It was so cold that KALE had been KILLED DEAD! I've never seen Kale killed by cold here before. The bad drainage probably contributed to its demise. It must have been hard on the potatoes.

The first survivor we found was like a miracle. Then we found another...and another. They did not amount to a huge weight but there were lots of small survivors. There seemed to be a pattern: some potatoes gave us a few, or in some cases many survivors, and others gave us none. I have a feeling the survivors really are slightly more genetically apt to survive--perhaps for just making their tubers slightly deeper.

So, this dark cloud of an event might yet have a silver lining.

[Wellspring]

some of these potatoes will be for re-sprouting for next years crop.  I love the idea of those that over-Winter being stronger genetically.  So, after reading Tom's/Atash's comments, I'm thinking to harvest some of the potatoes and leave others in the ground.  However, I would still like to know "if it's fine to keep watering the potatoes that are dying off which is next to another variety that isn't dying off?"
Hmmm . . . I just realized something about that question.  If they over-Winter (rain, cold) just fine (like Tom's), why would there be a problem with watering the died-off plants?

BTW, what would cause one variety dying back faster than another if they are planted together at the same time?  And there is no disease involved in that dye-back.

Normally, one would harvest the mature potatoes...the ones that died down...within a period of time.  Allowing them to stay in the ground to re-sprout is OK if you wish to leave them in the ground to grow next year.  The dormancy period of potatoes, (the resting period) is anywhere from three months to about 5 months is the soil is warm enough.  Cold weather makes the dormancy period longer.

If these potatoes are for replanting or for eating.......my answers would be different.


Tom Wagner

[Atash Hagmahani]

I'll let Tom answer the irrigation question, because I think there are differences between rain and irrigation, but I don't know if they are significant.

BTW, what would cause one variety dying back faster than another if they are planted together at the same time?  And there is no disease involved in that dye-back.

Hope this doesn't sound too obvious: different genetics. 

Some potatoes are highly "determinate", and some are more "indeterminate" (they sort of keep growing and going as long as they like the weather). Tom and I were talking about that this afternoon. One of his potatoes just keeps going and going and going long after the Amey Russets called it quits. And it was one of the earlier ones I planted. It's even re-blooming!

You might have noticed the same thing in tomatoes. Some tomato types stop growing after they set fruit. The fruits are "terminal"--they come at the end of a shoot, and that's it. Other tomatoes keep going and going and going, and the fruit is produced on side branches that do not interfere with the growing tip. A few tomatoes are sort-of in-between: the fruit terminates a shoot, but then sometimes if the weather remains favorable, side shoots develop that can also eventually produce a fruit.

[tigger]

So, this dark cloud of an event might yet have a silver lining.

Good to hear!

[Wellspring]

Atash:  Great to hear the confirmation of what I'm experiencing as well.  Same thing, the Amy's stop, but others just keep going and going and going.

So, why not grow more of the indeterminate types?  Or, what's the advantage (if any) of growing the determinates like the Amy's?

[Atash Hagmahani]

Tom will have to answer that one too, but he did mention something elliptically over the phone. I didn't press the issue because it's not my problem; I'm not a farmer. Maybe the live plant gets in the way of harvesting operations.

[Tom Wagner]

I have a passion for potato research and breeding that borders on a thin line between my preferred state of consciousness.  But all that does is too foster my contentiousness between common sense and meditative thoughts.  Since I am guilty of sending out potato varieties that differ widely on maturities, I become my own worsening enemy.  I should not be surprised to be confronted with questions regarding when to shut off the irrigation water on matured potato vines and what to do about late growing potatoes as to expected harvests, etc.

  First of all, potato varieties can be grouped into early (90 to 120 days), medium (120 to 150 days) and late varieties (150 to 180 days).

That is somewhat simplistic since many factors enter into the template of what makes a potato variety fall into one or more of those maturity dates.  Most folks would prefer to grow a single variety and have it all mature at the same time.  If they grow a few more, they still want the maturities to be close.  When I send out twenty varieties it may overwhelm the most patient grower, since one will end up with tall plants, short plants, early or late, plants dead and others blooming for weeks on end.  I would not worry too much about a plot of many varieties of potatoes when it comes to watering.  Most growers shut the water off to 'set' the skin on the potatoes so that they can harvest the tubers a few weeks later without skinning.

Some early potatoes are indeed determinate, short growing, seldom blooming, set tubers early,  enter senescence, are shallow rooted, are affected by viral or fungal pathogens, and generally 'succumb'  to the environmental/genetic mix.

When any one of the above factors is shifted, such as indeterminable cessation of maturing, increased virus resistance, day length sensitivity, increased root growth, sporadic tuber initiation, what have you.........a complexity of many potato varieties makes one shift from the rational to the mystical personality to interpret the interplay of genetics and environment. I have to think about how the parents of a variety would respond to the current season...how the grandparents would react, and so on.  I have to think of the rational believability of what is happening or go to my intuition for an inspired thought.  Why does my Reiche Tom potato variety looks so darn good in the field when other varieties are looking run-down?  Is it because the low land tropic variety Reiche dominates the expression over the Tom Kaighin parent?  Why does this hybrid have large tubers already that have a delectably waxy/mealy texture and a flavor that borders paradisaical sensations.  Late varieties like this would fail to make the grade of commercial growers, but for home gardeners-this variety is like the final ragnarök.


Whenever I go into a potato plot without my plot maps I often get confused.  There is an overload of information that demands an explanation from me, and I can only imagine what others are thinking when they plant my potatoes and don't have the history of each variety in their backlog of knowledge.  There is no accepted unified potato field theory. It remains an open line of potato research.  What I see as levels of absolute reality...another person senses an unresolved reality.

The "Divine Potato" is within as well as without

[Wellspring]

Oh my . . . those insightful musings provides just the necessary overview needed . . . I'll now return to those twenty or so plantings that are at various stages of early, middle, late growth with a new perspective and notepad. 
Just yesterday, I was out mulling around the potato beds admiring those (indeterminate?) types that are so amazingly lush and full and blooming . . . I pulled a few of the "mature" (dead?? or just senescent??) plants and found just a few tiny, itsy-bitsy spuds!!  "Hmmm . . . that's interesting," I thought.  I sure hope the more productive types flourishing next door have a great deal more spuds to harvest.  It's a fun and mysterious process that begs "surrender."