Planting potatoes in spring in open ground

Preparing potatoes for planting in spring

In fact, you can save a lot on planting potatoes. There are several ways.

Cut the tubers into pieces. Good potato seed tubers should be small – about the size of a chicken egg. They are usually planted as a whole – 1 tuber in each hole. But in order to get more planting material, each potato can be cut into pieces. Half at least. And if there are a lot of eyes, then into 4 parts. The main thing is that each slice has at least 1 eye.

It is necessary to cut potatoes 2 to 3 days before planting so that the cuts are ventilated. And before planting, they should be dusted with ash or sprinkled with crushed coal – this will protect the tubers from diseases.

An important point: it is necessary to cut the tubers along, because their main sprouts are at the top. If cut across, only the upper part will sprout, and the lower part may not sprout.

With this method of planting, you will get a crop of 2 to 4 times more, depending on how many parts the tuber is divided.

Plant on seedlings with eyes. Potatoes usually have a lot of eyes – from 5 to 10 pcs. And each of them can be planted separately. To do this, in mid-April, the tubers need to be taken out of the cellar or refrigerator and germinated in a warm and bright room. As soon as the sprouts reach a length of 0,5 – 1 cm (after about 2 weeks), they are cut out with a knife with a piece of pulp – about the same as you cut out wireworm wormholes. Just need to grab more pulp.

The eyes are planted in a cup with a volume of 200 ml to a depth of 5 cm. In about a month you will get excellent seedlings, which can be planted in the garden at the end of May.

With this method, you can get 5-10 times more potatoes (depending on the number of eyes on the tuber). Tubers grown from eyes will be slightly smaller than when planting whole tubers or cloves, but the final yield is still significantly higher.

Germinate the tuber three times. Few people know, but a tuber can be planted … several times! In this case, approximately 30 seedlings are obtained, each of which will give 2 – 3 large tubers. That is, about 90 tubers!

To speed up the emergence of seedlings, seed tubers begin to germinate in mid-March. It is best to take small ones, 50 – 60 g (the size of a chicken egg). If there are none, large ones will do, but they need to be cut in half, and the slices sprinkled with crushed charcoal or ash.

On the cut there should not be the slightest sign of disease – ring rot, rusty spotting, nothing at all that causes concern. Unhealthy tubers must be discarded, and the knife with which they were cut must be disinfected in a strong purple solution of potassium permanganate or on fire.

Seed tubers are most conveniently germinated in boxes. A wet layer of steamed sawdust is poured onto the bottom. Potatoes are laid tightly on top of them. From above they are sprinkled with peat with a layer of 2 – 3 cm. The boxes are placed in a cool room with a temperature of 12 – 15 ° C. And always in light, so that the sprouts are dark green, thick and short with rudiments of roots at the base.

Water the tubers once a week, the water temperature should be 1 – 17 ° C. In such conditions, after a couple of weeks, a “bouquet” of seedlings appears, which quickly grow up. When they reach 18 – 5 cm, each potato is removed, the sawdust is shaken off and all sprouts with roots are carefully broken off.

From one mother potato, up to 12 sprouts-seedlings are obtained. It is planted in peat pots, and in mid-May – in open ground, every 30 cm. If frosts are planned, the plants are covered with plastic bottles with a cut bottom.

But on the uterine tuber, in addition to thick and green sprouts, thin white ones are often also formed. They are not touched, and the tuber is again planted in a box and again covered with peat or humus soil. After 2 weeks, these small white shoots break out into the light and soon become firm, dark green, with roots at the base. They are once again separated from the tuber and planted either in pots or in open ground.

But even after that, the mother tuber is not thrown away – it is also planted in the garden. From sleeping buds, it will give another 5 – 7 shoots, will grow like an ordinary potato bush and, with good care, will give 10 – 12 selected tubers by the end of summer.

Fertilizer for potatoes when planting in spring

Before planting potatoes in the spring, you need to apply nitrogen fertilizers – ammonium nitrate (1 tablespoon per 1 sq. M) or ammonium sulfate (4 teaspoons per 1 sq. M).

And it is also necessary to add phosphorus under potatoes – it improves root growth, tubers grow larger and more starch accumulates in them (1). And potassium. Usually these fertilizers close up in the fall for digging the site. But if you haven’t done this, bring them in in the spring. Along with nitrogen. And then dig up the soil.

Potato planting dates

In the middle lane, potatoes are planted from May 1 to May 10. If the spring is early, warm, you can plant tubers after April 25. Early varieties can be planted until the end of May (if for some reason they could not do this at the beginning of the month) – they will have time to produce a crop.

Conditions for planting potatoes

Soils for potatoes should be loose and fertile. The ideal option is sandy loam or loam.

Potato yields the greatest yield in cool summers, when the air temperature during the day is not higher than 25 °C, and at night – 10-15 °C (2).

Potato planting methods

The easiest and most reliable way of planting is under a shovel, in holes. With this option, the soil is additionally loosened, which only benefits the potatoes.

In regions with close groundwater, potatoes are planted on ridges 20 cm high – this will protect the tubers from getting wet and rot.

Potato planting schemes

The traditional potato planting scheme looks like this:

• between rows – 70 cm;
• in a row – 30 cm.

However, experiments conducted at the Belarusian Research Institute of Fruit Growing, Vegetable Growing and Potatoes showed an interesting pattern – the denser the planting, the higher the yield (1). And even the amount of starch in the tubers becomes higher. Higher yields and with a slightly sparse planting. But with the standard scheme, the indicators are the lowest. The experiment was carried out on potatoes Skorospelka 1.

But when planting according to the 70×15 cm scheme, the potatoes grow smaller. Therefore, scientists recommend using this method for growing seed tubers – they should be the size of a chicken egg. And in order to grow a crop for food, it is still better to plant potatoes according to the scheme 70×25 or 70x35cm.

How to increase potato yield

Potato is an unpretentious crop that grows with little or no care. It can not be watered or fed, but there is one technique that significantly increases the yield of tubers – hilling.

Over the summer, potatoes need to be spudded twice:

• when the bushes reach a height of 15 – 20 cm – they fall asleep on the lower leaves;
• 2 – 3 weeks after the first hilling, before flowering – the earth is poured so that the height of the ridge is 15 – 20 cm.

Hilling is best done in the evening, in the cold. It’s impossible during the day – if you damage the roots, which often happens, the bush will quickly wither in the heat. It is even better to carry out this operation in cloudy weather the day after the rain – here you will kill two birds with one stone: pile up the potatoes and destroy the soil crust, after which the earth will become loose and the roots will be able to breathe better.

Popular questions and answers

We talked about the spring planting of potatoes with agronomist-breeder Svetlana Mikhailova.

Sources of

1. A group of authors, ed. Polyanskoy A.M. and Chulkova E.I. Tips for gardeners // Minsk, Harvest, 1970 – 208 p.
2. Fisenko A.N., Serpukhovitina K.A., Stolyarov A.I. Garden. Handbook // Rostov-on-Don, Rostov University Press, 1994 – 416 p.