Can anyone help me about potato growing, why so many baby potato, but not big mature size potatoes.
by debarghya
Can anyone help me about potato growing, why so many baby potato, but not big mature size potatoes.
by debarghya
8 Comments
I don’t know but when you make mashed potatoes don’t matter!little ones are good too, mix with salt olive oil and cilantro uh! Delicious !
I don’t know but when you make mashed potatoes don’t matter!little ones are good too, mix with salt olive oil and cilantro uh! Delicious !
Did you harvest too soon? They normally need time to grow. Either that or you had dry soil or soil lacking the right nutrients.
Size is based on variety, fertility, water, and harvest date.
If you did everything right and the potatoes are still small, you either need a variety better suited for your area or simply a bigger variety.
If you didn’t fertilize right the potatoes will be small, usually that means not enough potassium, but potassium uptake can be affected by cold temps and wet soil too.
Wet soil can hamper root growth and nutrient uptake, dry soil makes nutrients unavailable to the plant because many nutrients are carried in water or their uptake is otherwise aided by water.
And finally, if you harvest too early, which I suspect is what you did, the potatoes will not have had time to grow to full size. You should wait until the plants are practically dead. I’m talking they’ve yellowed, leaves are falling off, they’re practically laying on the ground etc.
Not only is it based on variety of potatoes that you start with but also the fertilizer you use along with the soil, the water and the cover. You can over water potatoes which can hamper size but also the spacing in which you have between the starters. Also make sure you have loose soil around so the tubers can maneuver through it easier.
We grow 5 different types over the last few years. We leave them in the ground until we want to use them until the very end of the season so don’t be worried about needing to pull them. Some will be larger like the ones in the russet family branch which are good for baked potatoes like buttes and then you have those of the smaller varieties which are more common. Don’t be dismayed at all.
And finally make sure if you’re planting in the same area every year, you’re adding amenities every couple years to bring the soil back to balance bc potatoes like all plants will take nutrients and leave other nutrients in the soil.
Maybe the seeds?!
I pick some small and let others get big, but 2 months will not get you big potatoes. Those look like gold potatoes that do not get as big as russet potatoes, but they are very nice and healthy. Can you put something over the plants (like newspaper on a tomato cage) to shade them when it gets hot so the plants last longer?
Did you harvest soon?