Contents
Preparing for the harvest
Potato digging begins after August 25th. But you need to prepare for this in advance.
For a couple of weeks, the soil in the aisles must be loosened – at least once every 5 days. Thanks to this, the tubers get access to air, their skin coarsens faster, and the denser it is, the better the potatoes are stored. Pathogens do not penetrate through the dense peel, and tubers are less damaged during digging.
If the tops are still green, they should be artificially dried a week before harvesting. For this, plants are sprayed with magnesium chlorate (60 g per 1 liter) or copper sulfate (50 g per 1 liter). Under their influence, there is an outflow of nutrients from slowly drying tops into tubers. And do not be afraid of these drugs – they are harmless. Moreover, the chemical aging of the tops has a big plus – thanks to this, the amount of nitrates in the tubers is reduced. At the same time, the dry matter content increases, the potatoes become more nutritious, and the yield is larger. In addition, after digging, the tubers are easily separated from the stems.
Harvesting potatoes
It is better to harvest potatoes in warm, dry weather (1) at an air temperature of 15 – 20 ° C. And it is important not to delay harvesting – if the soil temperature is below 7 ° C, the tubers will lose some of the nutrients and will be stored worse. The autumn heat is also detrimental to the crop: the potatoes will begin to give new shoots and babies, which means that they themselves will lose some of the nutrients.
Most summer residents work with a shovel, and this is wrong – there are a lot of tubers, and the best, largest, are often cut. Therefore, it is better to dig potatoes with a pitchfork. The earth is easily sifted through their teeth, they do not cut potatoes. It is only necessary to stick the tool 30 cm further from the main stem, hook the nest and turn it over to the garden.
The tubers must be sorted immediately. From the best bushes, where all the potatoes are even, healthy and there are a lot of them – set aside for seeds. Exactly! But many summer residents do it differently – first they collect all the potatoes indiscriminately, dry them, and then choose seed tubers from the total mass – the right size. But a good mother tuber may come from a poor low-yielding or even diseased bush. And all these qualities will manifest themselves next year. So potatoes for seeds should be taken only from good “nests”.
The rest of the potatoes must be collected separately from the seed. And then also sort. Healthy tubers will be stored. And the sick and injured – for food in the near future.
If the potato is covered with damp soil, it cannot be peeled immediately, otherwise the skin will be damaged and the tubers will then rot. Therefore, they must first be dried, and not in the sun (many summer residents pour potatoes right on the field), but in the shade. And no more than 2 hours – otherwise they will turn green, they form the toxic substance solanine.
After drying from the tubers, they carefully clean the ground and pour them into some cool, dry, dark room, for example, in a barn or a bathhouse. There they should lie for about 2 weeks – during this time the potatoes will finally dry out and completely ripen. In addition, tubers will appear, rotten from the inside – they will have to be thrown away.
Well, after drying in the barn, potatoes can be safely lowered into the cellar. They stay there all winter long.
Potato storage
It is best to store potatoes in a cellar at a temperature of 2 – 3 ° C and an air humidity of 85 – 90% (2). If it is below the norm, the tubers are covered with straw, burlap, shavings.
Humidity during storage of potatoes also plays an important role. The ideal option is about 70%. It will be lower – the tubers will wither. Above – rot.
If the humidity is below normal, you can put buckets of water in the cellar. And when it is too high, the room should be ventilated more often. If this does not help, the potatoes remain damp, boxes with quicklime, salt, charcoal are placed in the cellar, which are periodically changed. And on top, you can pour beets in a layer of 2 – 3 layers – because of the thick peel, it is resistant to disease and protects potatoes from dampness and rot.
Tubers should be inspected periodically. If you find rotten ones, immediately remove them, and pollinate neighboring tubers with wood ash – it will restrain the development of diseases.
Popular questions and answers
Answered our questions agronomist-breeder Svetlana Mihailova.
What varieties of potatoes keep the longest?
Can you store potatoes at home?
Why do potatoes rot in the cellar?
Sources of
- Yakubovskaya L.D., Yakubovsky V.N., Rozhkova L.N. ABC of a summer resident // Minsk, OOO “Orakul”, OOO Lazurak, IPKA “Publicity”, 1994 – 415 p.
- Fisenko A.N., Serpukhovitina K.A., Stolyarov A.I. Garden. Handbook // Rostov-on-Don, Rostov University Press, 1994 – 416 p.