Lots of Options for Growing Potatoes
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- Опубліковано 18 сер 2024
- After a second season of growing potatoes in large grow bags filled with either soil or other forms of carbon based growing material, I have learned a lot about fertility, soil, carbon and growing potatoes. And now I have a lot more questions that I want to explore.
0:00 Different options for growing potatoes
0:50 Setup of grow bag trial
2:43 Soil plus compost
4:45 Soil plus compost and amendments
7:52 Soil without compost
9:11 Carbon based growing medium
11:33 Decomposing while growing
12:44 So much learning
15:06 Future explorations
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Your channel is an absolute gem of information. Perfectly presented, studies thoughtfully planned, and seemingly lacks any bias.. I feel like these videos will outlast us all in their relevance.
Wow, thank you!
That's exactly why I subscribed.
Always excellent. It's why I sponsor the vids through Patreon.
This channel is criminally underrated
You making fun of Irish potatos, boy? 😂✌
🙂
For only 2 seed potatoes in each grow bags it is pretty amazing at the potential for growth possible.
forealz
Yeah, I do have to remember that it is quite the yield increase compsred to what was put in.
Excellent video, as always, Bruce! Encouraged by your previous potato video, I threw a single small, half-rotten and totally sprouted russet potato from the grocery store into a 5 gallon grow bag full of cheap garden soil (what amounted to woodchips and sand) earlier this year, not expecting very much. After waiting for the foliage to die back almost completely, I moved the bag to a covered area and waited 2 or 3 more weeks before harvest. The skins were still thin and pale, but I got a few very nice potatoes in the harvest, just over 4lbs, very nearly 2kg, of edible, albeit disparately sized spuds. I fertilized consistently with a synthetic liquid feed, but it was a struggle to keep the fabric bags from drying out in the extreme (and extremely uncharacteristic) drought we've been facing in my area these last two years. It's simply amazing how tolerant and reliable they are, as well as how high their potential is when conditions are improved.
As far as my thoughts on this installment, it's my understanding that allowing the growing medium to dry essentially allows all of the soluble nitrogen present at that time to evaporate, too. This is the key reason foliar feed fails to perform, and it's also the reason consistent liquid feeding, particularly with a complete soluble fertilizer, never seems to fail. It's also likely the reason the more mature composts consistently won out vs the soil mixes in this trial.
I'd love to see these trials repeated with a focus on water (and, thus, soluble nitrogen) retention. Peat moss, coconut coir, and vermiculite are all relatively widely available options, and there are also a handful of water-absorbent polymers suitable for agricultural use. SIP systems represent the peak of this concept, but they can be costly to build and tricky to maintain; however, they can also be as simple as placing a drip pan under a grow bag. Obviously, there are environmental considerations for all of these options, and I understand this may exclude some or all of them from use in the RED Gardens Project.
Thank you for your continued work and dedication!
Good compost is all you need. Bacteria create mass and nutrients.
Cool that you got a crop out of that trial, and not surprises that you had difficulty keeping the plants watered enough in the fabric bags. I'm glad I installed the dripper irrigation system this year, as it meant that lack of moisture in the bags was not an factor, more of the time.
I found ceramic watering spikes--the kind you put an upside down bottle into--to be incredibly helpful for my renter-friendly-grow-bags-on-a-patio-without-a-hose garden. It's really a game changer to be able to provide that consistent moisture, and it's a nice bonus to be able to do it without plastic. In my climate, they can easily prevent large grow bags from drying out with just twice weekly maintenance. :)
Great stuff, Bruce. This reinforces my switch from using urine in the compost year round, to only composting it during the winter. The rest of the time, I'm fairly certain it will do more good going right on the beds. Also, since it only becomes available in relatively low weekly quantities, it insures even application during the growing season. Nice how that works out. :) As always, thanks for sharing.
Does it take a year to make compost? If you turn it a few times doesn't it only take a few months and urine makes it go faster?
Thanks! That regular dilute feeding does seem to have a lot of benefits. I do wonder what the longer term implications of that would be, if it would reduce the amount of carbon in the soil. I imagine in most cases reasonable applications of compost can more than make up for any loss.
So cool love it. Planted purple small potatoes I like from the store and got x10 even with shitty soil and low sun time. Microwaved + yellow mustard = best snack
Nobody eats potatos with mustard! Get some butter, sour cream and chives maybe some bacon . There's your champion.
Mustard in a potato salad is great! With chopped dill pickles!
@@REDGardens I forgot about potato salad! If he said mayo and mustard I wouldve known! 😘👌
Could be interesting to see breakdown of costs for each bag vs yield. Very often i see people promoting ways of getting higher yields which involve either lengthy or costly processes, which can be uneconomical on a scale such as yours (or even in your back garden!)
Yes, a breakdown of costs would be really interesting, as some of them took a lot of resources. This would really be a factor if I was to switch to trying to get a consistently good yield out of growing in bags, rather than using them for trials like this.
OK: Decomposed wood chip with 2 year old municipal compost and a big chunk of additional fertiliser.
Absolutely excellent video! I am trying to maximize my potato crop yield and found this very helpful!
Very Impressive. I'm a deep mulch gardener, mostly decoposing woodchips, cut grass (no seed), leaves etc. I'm also a fan of using dilute urine & woodash as fertilizer....therefore I was pleased to see your video and note how thing additions I use in my garden fared in your garden. Keep up the good work Red.
Thanks. I think the urine really helps with gardens that heavy mulches of high carbon material.
Thank you so much for creating this fabulous resource--to Bruce and also everyone else who contributes in various ways.
🙂
I'm looking forward to your conclusions on how to get the most out of growing in bags and organically get the best crop possible! thanks as always
Hope to get closer to that next year.
I always wish to have a Convo with you...to me you have best educational Info on gardening in the universe... Love your bean video about pruning
Thank you!
Very informative for me as I grow on nearly sterile ground and most nutrients come from what I add.
Thank you from Canada
Do one with hydroponic feed eg 4-18-38 NPK, magnesium sulphate , calcium nitrate and micronutrients in ratio of 2:1:2:0.5 . Apply directly to soil once a month or fertigate once a month.I only use compost as soil replacement , you cant depend on them as a source of fertilizer.
But you can depend on them as a source of fertilizer though. The problem is when they call deteriorated woodchip > compost.
Hydroponics would be a cool thing to try!
I just used the 4-18-38 part of the Masterblend you mentioned. I grew them in Southeast US in 100% peat moss. I added bone meal when planted seed potatoes and fertilized twice with the liquid ferts. I got a grey harvest.
I like eating potatoes. This is the first time I watch you grow potatoes. It’s very interesting. Great video
That Was a big crop of potatoes
I started adding micronutrients too my compost bins like in organic forms volcanic rocks dust and wood ash for the worm have too break it down for it too be viable for a plant to uptake the nutrients i found that works very nicely
Thank you for such a great trial
Alfalfa pellets and bone meal have worked better than anything I have found for taters. Just spread a layer of alfalfa pellets and sprinkle bone meal around the seed potatoes when planting. I plant in ground though so this may not be as effective in containers. My soil is very heavy clay content. When I first started it was hard as a rock. I have tilled a lot of homemade compost and peet moss into the soil. I cover with lots of leaves in the fall and constantly add grass clippings throughout the summer. I had lots of potatoes that were almost the size of an adult head. Never seen potatoes that big before. I also mulched with hay in the spring. Never fertilized once during the growing season. I meant to but the plants got so big it was impossible to get between the rows. It turned into one solid canopy of potatoes.
I would like to try alfalfa pellets, but they just are not available here in Ireland. I would also love to try growing in heavy clay, as it is probably so different to growing in the lighter sandy loam soil we have.
I grow my potatoes in 35l pots in multi purposecompost used year to year and chaned every 4th year in rotation. Add balanded organic potato feed and mulched to retain moisture and get good yields. Agree amendment determines size of crop and compost just acts as a medium. Think loose medium allows tubers to swell.
I was also wondering about how much the loose material can help the potatoes to swell.
I love experiments like this Bruce. Most of this has been my findings too during my own trials
🙂
Another great video, Thank you 😊
As always amazing information!
Thank you so much 🙏
Thanks brother, it's good to see you getting more and more comfortable in you presentations. It is really fun to watch. Respect from Africa 🇿🇦
Thanks for that feedback! 🙂
I sometimes think up amazing experiments and then immediately think of you and wish I had the consistency and follow through to do the things! You are a Rockstar!
Ah, thanks!
It’s interesting as the last experiments done in the past with potatoes 😊
🙂
It was interesting re all the potato comments last year about the compost not having broken down enough to provide fertility. A year on and the composts seem to have performed worse, not better, for having broken down more.
I mean its basically just tiny woodchip at this point. They never put enough N in there to properly compost in the first place so ofcourse it would all be gone by now. What it really needs is some grass clipping or urine and a few turns of the pile.
that was not the analysis last year @@BlackJesus8463
There were two types of compost in this batch that I used to fill the full bags with.
One is the stuff I buy in made with a lot of woody material, and it actually did better this year than I expected, probably because of the age and the extra amendments I added.
The other one based off my own compost, did really well last year, and a bit better this year.
It was the new batch of compost that bought in and added to the bags of soil that did poorly, but that hadn't aged as much.
Merry Christmas and a Happy new Year from Australia to you.
Thanks, same to you!
you made an awesome expermint, you should have tested for Nitrogen potassium ratio , wood chip having the most potassium will be the winner
It would have been good to check that ratio.
That’s interesting and some good yields, I love growing potatoes! Easy to grow, hard to grow well…. My record is just under 7lbs for one plant a few years back, and have made a couple mistakes the last two, so less. I’m certain I could achieve 10-15lbs a plant with that variety (Pontiac Red) if I had the right property and resources, but not now anyhow.
Yes in the bag situation, they benefit from being hit with the kitchen sink, compost, low dose chemical, liquid and solid organic, each releasing different nutrients at different times. Plus if the roots can go into the native soil through holes, they thrive way more with all that extra free food. Cheers🎉
Yes, easy to grow, hard to grow well!
Interesting information. Thank you.
Yes. Taters are prolific under desirable conditions. We grow a few for the kids to participate and learn. We get our years supply from farmers. Cheaper. Little risk. Stay safe.
Excellent video thank you.
Fascinating as always, thanks Bruce. So much to think about here. It would be interesting to add a layer of experiment where some bags are sheltered from rain and so watering is controlled, just thinking from a leaching perspective but maybe not important. We too are always perplexed when 2 plants of the same variety give completely differing sized tuber yields. From a storage PoV it’s more important for us to have larger tubers so if we had a better idea how to encourage plants to do this it would be great, people might argue that potatoes are potatoes but 50kg of larger spuds are 10x more valuable to us than 100kg of tiddlers.
Thanks! I do want to figure out how much waterline is a potential factor, and how much of the nutrients might be draining out the bottom of the bag.
If its nearly free its sustainable 😊 Thank you .. would like to see the comparison with earthing up with grass and then compost on top vs just grass 👍🏻
I really like your potato bag experiments. I watched last year as well and I hope you keep it going. I know it is ridiculous probably but would you consider adding another set of bags with every amendment in the experiment? Maybe every one except the soluble fertilizer and every one with the soluble fertilizer. Just a bonus set really even though it might be a bit hard to fit them all in one bag.
Sounds interesting, but I think id prefer to reduce the size of this experiment!
Could you have your local ag department do a soil analysis of NPK and trace minerals so we could establish a base comparison with our own local soil types and profiles ? What is your growing zone? Really enjoy your presentations. Thank you 🙏.
How is that going to help you?
We don't really use growing zones here in Europe (seems to be only a North American thing). And we don't have local ag departments either, or at least ones that are interesting id anything that isn't large scale dairy/beef operations. But I have done a lot of soil tests for the general soil around her and things vary a lot from garden to garden depending on the amendments and gardening method. But it is all high ph, because of the calcareous soil we have, with moderate/low amounts of phosphorous and quite low sulphur, and would benefit from other trace elements being added. Potassium is generally better, probably because of the amount of of compost I bring in. So I think there is more of an issue with some nutrients being locked up or less available because of the high pH, and haven't figured out how to feed that into this exploration yet.
Bruce, great trial, but my takeaway, FWIW, is that you're generally underestimating the amount of nutrients the ptotatoes need to produce a good crop. I mainly use pelleted chicken manure, and I was surprised to see yoiu add only 200g of it to the bag. I would have added close to a kilo, or a couple of pounds to a bag that size. I think next. year it would be interesting to do a test with identical soil / compost mixes but 200 / 500 / 1000g of chicken pellets in the various bags to see the realtionship between quantity and yield.
That is a lot of chicken manure pellets, and would end up being an expensive crop of potatoes! But it would be interesting to try.
this is amaizing
You should try growing potatoes in conditioned straw bales instead of filling a grow bag with straw. The compact bales actually contribute to growth rather than restrict it
That would be interesting to try.
I haven't seen you try mycorrhizal fungi yet.
The decomposed wood chips is very impressive.
Have you used leaf mold yet? It usually takes about 18 months for leaves to break down into leaf mold compost.
I made the mistake of using composted cattle manure from the garden center two to three years ago. I started having severe problems with my plants and didn't know why. I thought it was due to extreme high temperatures. I kept thinking I had like a mosaic virus, or herbicide damage, and after two years I figured it out that the cattle manure had been tainted with an herbicide that the cattle had grazed on. (2,4D, or Grazon). I couldn't get seeds to germinate, and plants would grow big and green, but not produce, and then they would get spindly and the leaves would look crazy. Hopefully 2024 the herbicide will be out of my soil. It can last up to 5-6 years... It devastated me and my garden. (Just a heads up in case you run into that across the pond).
He shows the fungi from the woodchip in his videos. Best bet for garden is probably pinestraw mulch, organic pelletized fertilizer and regular application of bacterial tea or compost tea and it takes years to build good soil but one storm can erode it all away.
I haven't used leaf mould, never get around to collecting enough, partially because there are not a lot of mature trees locally.
Herbicide contamination can be a really tough thing! Hope it stops being a problem for you next year. I am glad I have been able to avoid it so far, but it does mean that it reduces the possible sources of manure around here.
Maybe you can do a NPK fertilizer trial next year where you use a balanced synthetic fertilizer and supplement with extra amounts of each of macro nutrients. This would have 5 trial groups (plain soil, balanced fertilizer, extra nitrogen, extra phosphorous, extra potassium). Some of the trials seem to suggest your potatoes are nutrient limited. My guess is they are potassium limited since the wood chips did the best.
I also think potassium may be an issue, but Nitrogen is also a key factor, deficiency in the colour of the leaves. It would be interesting to explore what you suggested.
go bruce gooo,i did the the same bag experiment and produced 1 kilo with the best amendments,the soil is garbage here :D
🙂 it does sound like your soil needs a lot of help, as 1kg is no a great yield from a potato plant.
Bruce, I feel like the main variable is how much nitrogen is in the growing medium + how much you are adding. It seems like generally the compost / carbon growing media are already rich in nitrogen and then you're adding a lot. It seems like the carbon group is close to the maximum yield you can get (though I'm curious what would happen if you did a group where you mixed your compost, the decomposed woodchips ash + urine feeding to see how high the yield could go). If you have a spreadsheet with the volumes of each material that you're adding it seems like you could get a relative comparison of the nutrient availability in each medium (especially the native soil vs municipal compost vs your compost).
Another thing you could do to try to figure that out would be to do a couple of test groups for each of your main media (municipal, native soil, and your compost) and then do varying amounts of COF amendment to each one of them. Like if you do 3 sets of each media with 1x 2x, and 3x the amount of COF you can probably see how much nitrogen it takes to get those media up to their maximum yield. (Though i think you may have essentially done that already by using the soluble fertilizer in the soil media as it's basically the max yield so you might use that as a control to back out the relative nitrogen in your other amendments).
Yeah, it would be interesting to see what the maximum yield could be, probably from soluble feeding quite frequently, as then I would have a baseline to work down from. I think this would be quite different from the approach I have been using, where the default low is a plant growing without any fertility, and seeing how much better it could get. Starting from the optimum yield, I think it is easier to frame things in what is missing, why each bag didn't do as well as it could.
Loved the video, and your comments about varied nutrient concentrations and timing of availability, reminded me of a past life. If you want to explore what the "absolute" potential of a strain, grow it in coir and perlite and feed a complete hydroponic nutrient solution. I reckon there must be data for preferred feeding schedules for potatoes, or just use the 9-10 week schedule on the bottles. I'm sure you must have at least thought about it. The reason we used hydro, it works...wonders.
I have never tried hydroponic growing, but want to. It would be really interesting to see how things can be different.
I would be interested in the question, how good other plants grow in the old potatoe earth.
Make sure the soil is on the acidic side because potatoes will get scab if they dont have acidic soil. Add sulfur no matter what and make sure the ph is acidic.
We have calcareous soil, with a high pH that is really hard to shift, even with a LOT of sulphur. So I'd rather just accept the scab, or find other ways to reduce it.
I manage a vineyard in the area about 30 miles north of me that has calcareous soil and basically I did a soil test and the calcium was so high it pegged the test they said it was like 8,500 ppm soil is self buffering itself at 7.1 it was a shocking soil test result didnt expect it to be basically calcium carbonate lol.
My native soil which I cant grow in because of gophers is acidic sand with a very low exchange rate and next to no organic matter and its hell because the ph is 5.8.@@REDGardens
Very interesting, as per usual. If there is one thing that I have learnt from my own garden struggles, is that addition of a large volume of woody compost can absolutely overwhelm available fertility and put a kibosh on that years harvest.
I'm a bit puzzled by the poor harvest from soil based mixes. Does your soil lean heavily to the alkaline side? I have found that mixes with large percentage of peat moss have a tendency to produce the largest and cleanest, in terms of scab, harvests and they run quite acidic.
Yes the soil is alkaline. We have a high pH calcareous soil here.
Plant potatoes for next season
Interesting how much variability. AND, really interesting that in some cases, LARGER potato, but fewer was the result.
Personally, I grow in 25 gal. (abt 95 liter) grow bags). I used the same soil in each bag for 2023 of a mix as follows: 1/3 of the soil is last year's grow bag soil, 1/3 peat, and 1/3 is compost from 2021 (I make my own compost: Whatever I cut for greens/browns this past growing season, ends up sitting and cooking/doing it's thing until March of 2025 - typically 12-18 months). I did try coco coir as a substitute,, but that really wasn't great for the potato.
My fertilizer routine is a healthy granular 3-4-6 NPK and a Blood meal 12-0-0 NPK, and a Bone Meal 4-12-0 a month before the March 17th Planting. Our summer was non stop rains, more so than normal, so, I ended up supplementing w/ a liquid feeding monthly since I am certain the rains washed every last bit of goodies away. (Not sure, BUT I think I saw a cue of animals 2 by 2 and a neighbor building a large arc)>
I saw a normal harvest of the Yukon Gold, a reduced harvest of Red Bliss (Maybe 35% less by weight), and more than 50% less by weight of the Peruvian Purple and Russian Blue, which makes sense as those are acclimatized for a drier growing season/more drought tolerant.
Overall, I think the heavy rains really affected my harvests (Tomato, squash, cukes, zucchini, pepper, onions, and garlic) most were at best even but more often, reduced harvests by weight of 10-25%, with one variety of Utah Yellow Onion almost 75% less compared to typical years. About the only thing I had significantly MORE by weight were Raspberries, Blueberries, and Beach Plum.
Yeah, the fewer larger potatoes was really interesting. Thanks for sharing your experience and strategy, especially about the fertility. I do wonder how much of the fertility washed out of these bags. Now I am wondering if I can set up some kind of exploration test that.
I have seen people plant 4 seed potatoes in these container size (determinate type).
2 seed potatoes are placed 4-6 inches above the bottom and the 2 potatoes towards the top (like you did in the video). All 4 are buried at the same time.
I hope you can run a trial for this in the next season.
Why? It's already been done. You should just show us were you saw it.
@@BlackJesus8463 garden like a viking. I don't grow potatoes, but taro and turmeric in box containers...in same way.
That is interesting. I think I would want to get a consistently good crop out of two before adding more plants to the same size containers.
@@AmuserrI tried his way of planting and wasn’t impressed. My grow zone is significantly hotter so that might have something to do with using black trash bags.
@@crtnyp I am in 10a zone. I use 2feet thermocol iceboxes which help up in heat
So the woodchip plus double was the best. Would the numbers be better with only 2 cups? Guess we will never know.
Yeah, more fertility did help.
What do you mix into your Complete Organic Fertilizer? I have been experimenting over the last 2 years with blending my own fertilizers both to cut costs and to tailor each fertilizer for different plants when I need it.
I follow the recommendations from Steve Solomon soilanalyst.org/soil-analysis-steve-solomons-worksheets-from-the-intelligent-gardener-growing-nutrient-dense-food/
I think the only way to get the straw to work is to treat it as a hydroponic medium and fertigate. Every watering has fertilizer in it.
Is it possible to adequately supply both the potatoes and decomposers? Or does additional fertilizer only drive decomposition even harder?
Good questions.
Would you ever consider hifher quantities of your COF?
Also if you would ever want to sketch out a multivariate trial that you could draw recommendations from (e.g. how much COF and feedings for a given soil) i would love to help design an experiment. I work in an industry with lots of DoE work :)
It would be interesting to see what effect higher quantities of the COF and chicken manure pellets would produce, but it starts to become an expensive way to grow potatoes!
I'm wondering if you could plant potatoes in straight wood chips, not decomposed wood chips but wood chips like you might get dropped off from a landscape company. Alot of people are using it as mulch im wondering if it could be used as a soilless medium, it seems like carbon mediums do quite well aslong as there is fertilizer and whats left over could be a good amendment at the end of the season could be used again next year for potatoes or other crops. I think I will try this next year as Its hard for me to get any quantity of soil where I am but lots of tree's and I have a chipper.
I suspect that the fresh woodchip would be a hard thing to grow in, unless there was very frequent liquid feeding.
Whoa you got a lot of taters!
I appreciate the visual details and extra effort. The only thing I’d suggest is being a little more specific with your description for newbies. Like I don’t know what you mean by complete organic fertilizer, carbon based material, potting compost, rooftop mix, decomposed wood, diluted urine 😳(really? diluted how much?) and what is wrong with municipal compost? I’m sure experienced gardeners know what you mean. One thing I learned for next year is that I wasn’t adding compost and fertilizer nearly enough! Thank you
Yeah, I can appreciate that would be an issue, especially for new viewers and growers. Unfortunately this video has way too much stuff, and can only be a quick survey, leaving out a lot of the details. I do talk about it more in my other videos on the same trials, but this channel is not really intended to be a 'how to' or intro to growing. More of an intermediate level, I guess.
Where are you buying those 5 connector drip irrigation fittings? I'd like to put less holes in my 4mm lines, but mostly only seeing 1/4 inch on amazon.
I got them from Deker Horticulture here in Ireland
Thanks for a very informative and helpful video Bruce.
I have 20 x 30 litre tubs to plant potatoes in next year and will use some of your lessons from this experiment.
I wonder if a dilute feed from stinging nettles would be of any use ?
It would be great to be able to use that as it’s so plentiful near my allotment.
Think about it. Where else are you going to get green waste compost? It's so good and rare you can't even buy it. Now tell me what you think about you nettles.
@@BlackJesus8463 I have thought about it and made a nettle tea to water plants on my allotment. I didn’t measure or evaluate it its effectiveness. Stinging nettles are often abundant but I don’t know how rich they are in nitrogen. I presume that they are easier to get than say human urine to use as a dilute tea.
It's freely available in the UK @@BlackJesus8463
Thanks. I have started using. a lot more 'weed tea' recently, and think it is a really useful option for getting a lot father the fertility form the nettles, comfrey, grass, etc into the gardens quickly. I want to set up a large tank for making weed/nettle tea next year and feed the grow bags through the drippers.
@@michaelmcclafferty3346 TBH it's probably the bacteria and not the nettles. ✌
I don't know what you plan on exploring in future videos, but i'm surprised the drip irrigation system didn't lead to an overall better yield this year. Looking @11:11 it seems 8 improved and 8 declined. Was the weather worse? bid the bags ever dry out?
I also think some of the tests are impacted by slow starts. Your video shows several plants shaded out by neighbors. This would distort the comparison between a early fast grower that then peter outs and a slow steady grower that can keep going all season. Didn't you have that trouble with tomatoes recently? Your space already looks really crowded, idk how you can spread them out to prevent overshadowing.
And finally, it seems like the carbon based bags did better than the soil based ones. I seem to remember the speculation from last year that the organic life was "Stealing" the nitrogen away from the potatoes. Thus the high performance of the regular liquid feeds. This seems similar to me. So, one direction would be to focus on carbon, but I'll throw an idea for nitrogen. Have you considered companion planting the potatoes with beans? stake it to one side, and try to keep the beans from overshadowing the potatoes or other bags? The beans should provide a regular drip of N all year long. My understanding is that when they produce pods they then take it all back up. Some people pull them at that point, or pinch the pods. But either way N should have been taken up by potatoes.
I was also a bit surprised by the poor yields, and I think the blight near the end of the season may have knocked back any gains from the irrigation.
The competition and overshadowing is a factor, but only really with the plants that grow very poorly from the start. Adding beans to the mix is an interesting idea, but my limited experience shows that they won't grow well in this climate, and would likely be too overwhelmed by the potatoes to produce much surplus nitrogen, if any.
Just wondering what is best: Some big potatoes or a lot of small ones. 🤔
I prefer big ones, but not necessarily too big.
Sorry if it's mentioned and I missed it but I'm wondering how big these bags are?
About 40L
What is the ideal water interval for watering potatoes grown in boxes, or bags? (I don't have drip irrigation.) But it feels like the watering interval for potatoes in boxes is different than for tomatoes etc. In my observations and learning with other gardening techniques over several years, it does seem accurate to me that there IS an ideal watering interval for most vegetable plants. I hope someone might offer insight on what it should be for potatoes? (X times per day or X per ... 2 or 3 days?)
Good question. I don't know.
@@REDGardens Wow. Thanks for the reply. I wasn't sure if you'd reply. I'm impressed that you did even if the answer is still a math problem to work on. And long live gardening and agriculture! Its not always easy to ask youtube channel stuff and get a reply anymore. Partly because there's so many people. You are a real person!
wood ash + wood chip compost = 🚀
👏👏👏👏👏
Blight was a big problem for many this year (including me), it's a shame it cut the trial short. I think it's a mistake to do as you did in the first two on the graph (maybe others) and that is to put the amendments near the top. For them to have any effect they need to be down by the roots, not up there. I throw the whole lot out into a pile and mix in my own made compost with a shovel before filling the bags. Putting compost on top as you know is a 'No-dig' thing, it has no place in bagged potato growing. It would be good to prove this by doing a side by side test next year maybe - amendments laid on top V amendments fully incorporated.
I wonder if you knew that there are determinate and indeterminate potatoes and that dictates how many and at what depth to grow them at in a bag? That's what I learned, but have not proved or tested.
Recently I had a go at trying to grow new potatoes for Christmas. The first issue I was met with in August was that there were no seed potatoes for sale and i'd eaten all mine! In desperation I got some supermarket Charlotte, but they took something like 4 weeks for only about 20% of them to show. When the weather turned bad I put them in the PT, but they all got blight in there. Maybe it was in there already because the toms were killed off by it a few weeks previous to this. As they were then doomed to failure I didn't bother trying to protect them from the frost which quickly finished them off.
If next year has less blight around i'll have another go using an improved technique based on what I learned. I much prefer new potatoes to maincrop so it would be good to have some on the table for Christmas dinner with all the other veg from the garden too.
Mixing it all in to the full volume would probably help. The main reason for leaving the compost on the surface is because it is not very fertile, and may lock up nutrients if mixed in.
How do they differ in taste?
A taste test of all these options was too much for me to take on this year. It was hard enough just getting them harvested. But it is something I want to explore some more.
@@REDGardens Yeah, lots of work anyways and a potato tasting could get filling really fast as well. Thanks for the great content!
@@HansWeberHimself Yeah, it would get really filling! But thinking about it some more, I realise that I could have selected a few different options and tasted them, to see if there was any difference. I tend to think that I need to sample them all, but even a subset wool be interesting to do, at least at first. And if there was a significant difference, that might give me an incentive to try some more. I'll have to remember the next year!
I know this sounds like a stupid question, but how do you collect urine? I assume it's in a bottle with a wide neck, but I've never worked out from growers what type of bottle they 'go' into to collect it. Is there a container you've found that's ergonomically easy to hold with one hand and that doesn't produce big splashes and a mess?
How to pee in bottle? 😂✌
I presume you are a bloke @@BlackJesus8463
I find the standard 5L container works best, the generic kind that we usually get vinegar and bulk dish liquid in. Anything larger gets too heavy to hold, and 5L is small enough to be easy manageable. Or I just urinate into he watering can if I am out in the gardens and no-one is around.
I bought a standard 10l water can and a very large funnel. Fill it up, sprinkle on plants, water deeply. I keep the can outside my back door or in my bathroom shower.
I'm still a bit lost at which fertilizer is best for potatoes? Also, how do I prevent scab on my white potatoes?
"Complete organic fertiliser" seems to perform well
I don't know how to prevent scab, apart from growing in a much more acidic soil that we have. I think the best fertiliser is the one you can get easily/cheaply wherever you are, and one that works well with your soil and other amendments. I don't think there is a 'best' overall, as it is all dependent on context.
I only use the COF as a baseline as I have it for another garden, but I have no idea if it is better or worse than others. I think it did well in this trial mainly because I added a lot of it.
I think the actual physical properties of these growing media in containers like this is overlooked Bruce. Natural soil will just pack down and leave little oxygen. One of the main properties of quality potting mix is that it holds itself open to allow water and oxygen to permeate. A grow bag like this just doesnt suit the use of garden soil at all. It will turn into a giant mud brick!
It hasn't been overlooked
There was defiance difference in harvesting potatoes out of the bags with soil in it, but interestingly some of the soil bags seemed to stay looser than others, or at least less compressed, and I didn't pay enough attention to see if it correlated with the different amendments.
We dont " grow carbon", as it compost in the field, 3/4 evaporates as co2 and other gases...
Carbon, soil, perlites, etc...the growing medium is secondary to the water, macro nutrients (npk), co2, hydrogen and general sunlight avaiable to plants. Temperature, both in air and root zone also matters...
The medium is more affective as it is more permeable to roots, and holds more water without dumping it. Belive you would have great result using only perlite and vermiculate, or even just sand (wich are almost nutrient absent).
Would love to see you trial a few bags on sintetic fertilizer. Sometimes they are, not only more productive, but also more ecofriendly (specially when it comes to transport mass).
Love your trials, even with so many variables...tanks.
It woudl be interesting to explore some more with synthetic fertilisers
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