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chickencoupe1

Question on my potatoes

chickencoupe
9 years ago

I planted the first week of April. They're strong and tall. The soil has compacted and seems thin, now. but, then, I don't really know how to raise potatoes. I planted them about 6-8" below grade and hilled them up with surrounding dirt. I don't think I've watered quite enough. They are in dappled shade in the late afternoons. Since the plants vary in size, I think they're getting enough sun. Will they grow taller if the soil is compacted.

As you can see,I planted the rows too close together. Something is telling me I should hill them up some more. or find a way to loosen the soil. I check and only see roots. I think some are about to set tubers.

Another option is to throw tires over some and put in soil. Don't know if it's too late for that. I'm thinking I can easily get another month's growth since they receive that dappled shade.

I don't know. Thoughts?

Or should I just leave them alone.

bon

Comments (153)

  • chickencoupe
    Original Author
    9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Yeah, I was guessing it's custom and reliability over what some might consider 'gourmet'. I may, yet, discover why. lol

  • Okiedawn OK Zone 7
    9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Red-skinned potatoes (Pontiac, LaSoda, Norland, etc.) store better/longer so maybe that means they are more popular with folks who want to raise their own food so maybe that's why your particular store is stocked up with more of them. Also, many long-time gardeners like to feast upon freshly-picked snap green beans with new red potatoes cooked with them. It is one of the true pleasures of late spring/early summer.

    We like all potatoes---regardless of the color of their skin and/or flesh and I prepare each different type using whatever method suits that particular kind of potato. Different ones have different cooking qualities, so I bet some people who've grown potatoes more than a couple of years focus on the ones that fit best with the methods they usually use when preparing potatoes for meals. A person wouldn't want to grow a lot of the waxy types of potatoes if they prefer to eat the fluffier ones, and vice versa.

  • chickencoupe
    Original Author
    9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Nice. Thank you. Storage, huh? I'll give a few a try and see if we can work with them, too. And compare.

  • chickencoupe
    Original Author
    9 years ago

    I'm very sorry. I have another question. Because of space limitations I have decided to replant potatoes in the same area this year. I did not have my soil tested. I should have. I hope to remember to do so this fall.

    Nonetheless, I was considering applications of organic material that would be helpful to replenish the soil after potato harvests. I don't even know since I've only grown taters once. I think I understand that root crops prefer phosphorous. I have some compost, but like everyone else, there's not enough. Is there anything else I should consider applying? And will home made bonemeal work okay for phosphorous?

    Should I put it down now or can I wait until just before planting? Wow. It'll be nice when I don't feel like such a bother on this forum.


  • Okiedawn OK Zone 7
    9 years ago

    Bon, Why are you sorry about asking a question? It isn't a bother to answer your questions either. This forum exists precisely so those of us who garden in OK can ask questions, seek advice, share experiences, etc.

    As long as you add organic matter to the soil to keep it loose and fluffy, there shouldn't be a problem with planting your potatoes in the same spot as long as you did not have any sort of disease or potato pest infesting that potato-growing area last year. You may or may not need to add a fertilizer. It just depends on the fertility levels in your soil, which you cannot really know since you didn't get the soil tested. If you want to add fertilizer before planting, you could add the fertilizer of your choice, whether it is organic or synthetic in nature, but if you do that you should add a complete and balanced fertilizer instead of trying to cherry-pick and add only phosphorus, potassium, nitrogen etc. There is a very specific reason for that.

    Clay soils of the type we have here tend to be extremely fertile so I think there's a good chance you don't need to add anything this year anyway. Often the kinds of clay we have here already have plentiful P and K and all you ever will have to add is N and then also the various micronutrients by adding compost or a balanced fertilizer that contains micronutrients. When you cherry-pick and add P or K or magnesium or whatever without actually knowing whether the soil needs those added or not, you run the risk of creating a surplus of a specific nutrient. The problem with that is that a nutrient surplus can interfere with the absorption/usage of other nutrients. That's why it is best to avoid adding a single nutrient just because you think or are guessing that the plants might need it.

    You shouldn't add a single nutrient that way unless you observed symptoms last year that the soil was deficient in that nutrient or have a soil test telling you to add it. When a gardener does that sort of scatter-shot adding of this or that without knowing if it is needed, it often creates a situation where there is an excess of something that is interfering in the uptake of other nutrients, so the gardener then tries to fix it by adding something else and then ends up on a hopeless merry-go-round of randomly adding this or that. in a frantic effort to fix things now.


    If you are going to add any sort of slow-release soil amendment or organic fertilizer to the potato-growing area, you can add it now as it will release slowly, if at all, in dry, cold weather, which seems to be the pattern we're swinging back towards after already having had spring in February. If you were going to add a quick-release synthetic fertilizer to the soil, it wouldn't hurt that much to put it in the soil now since potato-planting time is almost here, but I'd probably wait and add it maybe a week before planting.

    Instead of focusing on adding random nutrients in specific areas to make up for a perceived nutrient-shortage or a perceived need that the plant might have, just focus on building the soil and improving it in a deliberate, steady manner, at least until you get a soil test done and have some guidance from it that tells you what your soil needs (if it needs anything at all). Potatoes are pretty good at finding the nutrients they need in the soil in which they are growing. I've had them perform equally well in barely-amended clay or barely-amended sandy-silty soil, although every year, as the soil got better through the continual addition of compost and organic matter, the potato harvests got better. If you were growing them in the kind of very fast-draining sandy soils (not the richer sandy loams) that do not hold nutrients or water well, then you might have to add fertilizer this year to get great yields, but if that were the case, I'd still add a balanced fertilizer if I didn't have a soil test to tell me specifically what was lacking.


    chickencoupe thanked Okiedawn OK Zone 7
  • chickencoupe
    Original Author
    9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    I cut my seed potatoes, yesterday. Thinking that might have been a bad idea, I did some reading on the internet. A more pressing concern is that I discovered some of them probably had blight. (They were rotting and reddish on the inside. Of course, I tossed those and any that had blemishes on the skin.

    I failed to clean my knife, tho. Should I chunk them all and start over?

  • johnnycoleman
    9 years ago

    Bon,

    I would encourage you to look up "Potato Hollow Heart" on the web. Just to address any identification issues. Some of our seed potatoes had "Hollow Heart" and we just planted them.

    Let me know.

    Johnny

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  • Okiedawn OK Zone 7
    9 years ago

    I agree with Johnny.

    If they were carrying Early Blight, it wouldn't matter as it is wind-borne and soil-borne and exists virtually everywhere anyhow---flaring up when the temperatures, relative humidity values and moisture combine to favor its growth and spread.

    I find it hard to imagine purchased certified seed potatoes would have Late Blight, as they have been treated preventatively.....that's why they are certified. Also, if your seed potatoes have late blight, and I am certain they don't, they won't last long enough for you to get them in the ground. Late Blight has to have very specific conditions (temperature and humidity is very specific ranges) in order to survive and, while it will survive on dormant plant matter, you'll unlikely to find it on purchased, certified seed potatoes.

    As for disfigured spots on the seed potatoes, that's life in the real world. They have been in storage, shipping and the retail distribution chain for months so I wouldn't expect them to look absolutely picture perfect. I plant any seed potatoes that happen to have blemishes on the skin as they generally are superficial marks that don't really affect anything. The potatoes still sprout and still grow.

    If the prospect of possible disease spread bothers you, buy sulfur dust and dust your seed potatoes in it before planting. It is a fungicide. While people with well-drained soil might never have to worry about seed potatoes getting diseased, folks who have clay often have more of a problem with fungal diseases because their soil drains more slowly, leaving the seed potato pieces more moist and more prone to fungal diseases. I don't use sulfur if we are pretty dry when I'm planting, but I will use it if the weather is rainy and the soil is staying wet.

    I think you're probably worrying about nothing.

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  • chickencoupe
    Original Author
    9 years ago

    Okay. I believe that was it. I suppose I should have been disappointed, but I know not enough of dirty seed potatoes to tell much. Many of them were in such bad shape that I knew they weren't good. Must have tossed 3/4 lb. I'll go buy some more and pick through them.

  • Okiedawn OK Zone 7
    9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Just for future reference, even seed potatoes that look pretty crappy will sprout and grow and produce healthy plants with healthy tubers most of the time. Now that you are a gardener, it is time to erase the grocery store image of perfect potatoes out of your mind. Gardening isn't always pretty or perfect, but we aren't trying to grow things that look perfect---we are trying to grow healthy food to eat. I don't throw any seed potatoes away unless they are mushy and rotting and stinky. If I am doubtful about the health of any of the remaining ones, I save them for the last and plant all the sorry-looking ones together in a separate row at the end of my potato planting area. After everything sprouts and grows, you cannot tell the row planted with ugly seed potatoes apart from the rows planted with fine-looking seed potatoes, except for this: since I usually plant 8-10 varieties, the "bad" row will be a mixture of many different varieties which is most apparent when they bloom as different ones can have blooms with different colors. My original intent in putting the sorry ones together in one row was that I'd know it was the bad row and, when they didn't sprout and grow, I'd know I could replant something else in that row, instead of having gaps in all the other rows. Well, I've never had to worry about replanting the row because they pretty much all tend to grow.

    Sometimes gardeners, particularly less-experienced ones, get hung up on everything being "just so" and looking perfect and all that, which is not at all necessary. Ugly tubers, corms, rhizomes and seeds still sprout and still grow and still produce great plants with great edible parts or pretty flowers or useful foliage. You have to give them a chance to show you that appearance doesn't matter---it is what's inside that counts. It is as true with plants as with people.

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  • chickencoupe
    Original Author
    9 years ago

    *paralyzed squeaky voice* Bill picked up another 20lbs of Yukons. OMG

  • Okiedawn OK Zone 7
    9 years ago

    lol Just remind him that HE will be digging potatoes in the summer heat!

  • chickencoupe
    Original Author
    9 years ago

    ha!


  • chickencoupe
    Original Author
    8 years ago

    Yeah, so ... that storm last week? I had dug out all these awesome holes for the potatoes and dig them in at the bottom. About 3 and half rows. Then, it stormed.

    Bathtub effect, right? Lesson learned.

    Well, today i saw a couple popping up. That's good. I guess. Maybe it was draining fast enough.

    so, then, Bill comes home with another sump pump. He pumps the rain water out of the LARGE storm shelter.

    Guess where all that water went?

    #%&$!!!

    I have 2 bags of potatoes. Guess who's going to plant those #$@! potatoes this weekend? Hint: NOT ME.


  • johnnycoleman
    8 years ago

    I have seen potatoes withstand all manner of issues and still produce good food. I have some volunteers coming up in many places.

    I'm hoping our new (90 year old) harvester will leave fewer behind. Some varieties make potatoes farther from the central vine.

    Our potatoes are popping up right and left.


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  • Okiedawn OK Zone 7
    8 years ago

    Bon, My experience mirrors Johnny's and I have seen potatoes survive a lot of rainy spells and even standing water. Much depends on how well the soil drains. If the seed potatoes are sitting in standing water for days on end, they might be just fine. If they are just sitting in waterlogged soil, they should be fine. Having said that, I always plant my potatoes in raised beds nowadays because the raised potato beds are lined with hardware cloth to keep the voles from eating the taters. I've never had potatoes drown in raised beds. Most years before the voles came along I just planted potatoes in grade level soil unless we had heavily waterlogged soil prior to planting time. One year I lost the seed potatoes when 6" of rain fell (around 3" in two consecutive storms about 2 to 4 days apart) but it was early enough in the season that I just replanted. Even onions will rot if clay soil stays too wet for too long, but I think I've only lost some onions (and certainly not the entire crop) in two different excessively rainy years. By excessively rainy, I mean up to 12" of rainfall in a month for a month or two followed by continuing nonstop rain for weeks and weeks. The onions I lost were at grade level in one year and in a raised bed in a different year. So, if your onions are in similar soil to the potatoes and they are doing well, I think you potatoes may tolerate the water just fine. I'd try to negotiate a promise out of Bill that he won't flood the garden with water from the sump pump any more, if that is possible.

    Johnny, My potatoes are popping up right and left too. They must be loving the rainfall and the persistently warm weather. While the weather felt too hot to me yesterday, the potatoes loved it--they were visibly taller by twilight than what they had been shortly after sunrise. I hope the hot temperatures back off for a while, though, as the potatoes are happier at cooler weather than what we had yesterday. I sure don't want too much heat too soon.

    Dawn

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  • johnnycoleman
    8 years ago

    Dawn,

    My potatoes are planted deeper than I have ever planted by hand. This is the first year we have used that potato planter so we are still learning.

    The rows are 48" apart, the in row spacing is 12" and they are planted about 6"+ deep. That is why it took so long for them to come up. However, that will give them a little extra protection from heat. The spacing and depth should fit well with drought conditions.

    Next year we will allow them to warm up to 60 or 70 degrees before planting.

    Johnny


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  • luvncannin
    8 years ago

    Bon I could send littleman over to help plant but let me warn you he loves to pick all the eyes off and rub them smooth!

  • chickencoupe
    Original Author
    8 years ago

    LOL !!


  • Okiedawn OK Zone 7
    8 years ago

    Johnny, I routinely plant 8" deep in trenches and then fill in the trenches as they grow. That gives my potatoes some protection from drought. I mulch heavily (up to 6" of mulch by June) once I've completely filled in the trenches, in lieu of hilling up the potatoes, which can be difficult to do in intensively-planted raised beds. Back when I could grow them in the ground instead of in a hardware cloth-lined raised bed (before the pine voles became a constant visitor to the garden), I could hill them up endlessly since there always was plenty of soil nearby. A couple of years ago voles feasted on my potatoes all summer, but haven't bothered them (knock on wood) since we built the hardware cloth-lined raised beds. It aggravates me that we had to do that, but we live surrounded by acres and acres of trees, so we're never going to get rid of all the voles because even if you trap and kill them, and the cats do their share of vole-killing, there's just an army of voles in the woods waiting to move into the garden and replace the ones you kill. Raising the potatoes in raised beds lined with hardware cloth has forced me to cut back substantially on how many I plant nowadays. This year's planting is slightly less than 100 square feet, and there were some years I planted 3 or 4 times that much space. On the plus side, I won't be hand-digging potatoes forever in the hot sun since there won't be so many to dig.

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  • hazelinok
    8 years ago

    I'm new to potatoes. Well, not NEW--I actually love eating them, but I'm new to planting and growing them. I have a question--probably several. Sometimes the info out there isn't specific enough (for me).

    Here's bit of the back story. Maybe 6 weeks ago I purchased a little bag of tiny potatoes at Lowes or someplace like that. Over spring break (15 days ago) I decided to try to plant them. The garden was still so wet from the snow the week before and the rain of that week. I managed to pull out the grass and weeds in a small spot and planted two of the tiny potatoes, not expecting them to sprout or come up. I was frustrated and quit--the soil was just so wet. Three days ago, I looked at that the small spot and noticed the two potatoes ARE coming up. Then today I noticed another one coming up very close to another one. I only planted two in that area. However, each of the little potatoes had more than one of those sprouted things (what are those called?). I think it might be the same potato coming up in two spots. Does that happen? And should I snap off the second sprouting?

  • jimmy56_gw (zone 6 PA)
    8 years ago

    In my opinion potatoes are hard to kill, I had frost hit them an they looked dead but came right back, The sprouted things are called eyes, I usually only leave 1 eye on per plant but you can leave 2 it's just that I think you get better potatoes with only 1 eye and it sounds like you have another sprout on the same plant, I would leave it there.

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  • chickencoupe
    Original Author
    8 years ago

    Sounds great, hazel. Sounds like ya planted the whole potato that might have had more than on eye, like jimmy wrote, and it sprouted plants from each eye. congratulations. You have tater plants!


  • Okiedawn OK Zone 7
    8 years ago

    I plant whole potatoes instead of cut ones if it is exceptionally wet at planting time, as it was this year, because they are somewhat less likely to rot in my wet clay. If I'm cutting, I like to leave at least 2 eyes per piece. The only danger in planting whole seed potatoes with lots of eyes is that too many sprouts may crowd one another as they grow. You still tend to get a lot of potatoes from them. One way to get away with planting larger seed potatoes with several eyes is just to space them further apart from one another so the multiple sprouts/stolons have more room to grow.

    When potatoes freeze back in the late frosts that are so common here, only a frost or two won't hurt them too much, but if they repeatedly freeze back over and over and over again, your yield can be lower because the plants have to expend so much energy regrowing after being frozen back. We still have to plant early, though, and risk having frost and freeze issues, though, because in our climate the weather can get too hot for tuber initiation too early some years. I'd rather plant early and be harvesting when the temperatures are only in the 90s. Digging potatoes when we're in the hundreds is just a miserable task.

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  • chickencoupe
    Original Author
    8 years ago

    We managed to get another 8 lbs in the ground, today. Tomorrow we'll do the remaining 5 lbs. It's late, but we started even later last year and had a decent crop. We're still very cool, so it's seemingly perfect.

    Bill was tired from digging, but he can dig about 200x faster than I can! While I was down there I inspected and many of the original potatoes have surfaced. The ones that haven't popped up were the oldest ones that were pretty spent before they went in ground. Additional mud that washed atop them might have been too much work for their energy stores. I'll leave them be and if they don't come up I'll plant corn in those places.


  • soonergrandmom
    8 years ago

    I also planted whole potatoes this year because the ground was wet. I didn't know it was the right thing to do, but it just seemed right to me at the time.

  • johnnycoleman
    8 years ago

    We just quartered our Kennebecs. We didn't pay any attention to eyes. There will be "blind pieces" in our rows but according to the professional potato growers, the total tonnage won't suffer because the plants on both sides of a blind piece will make bigger potatoes.

    I read a lot. Can you tell?


  • chickencoupe
    Original Author
    8 years ago

    For as much as you're planting, that makes sense.

  • Okiedawn OK Zone 7
    8 years ago

    Bon, It is the same way with Tim and I. He can move huge amounts of dirt with a shovel while I'm moving small amounts with the same size shovel. I always try to get him to move the massive amounts of dirt (not always successfully either) because he is a much more efficient digger than I am.

    Carol, See what great gardening instincts you have? I call my gardening instincts "the voices in my head" and, you know, they never let me down.

    Johnny, Most of us aren't growing for tonnage, though. (grin) A few years ago we harvested almost 400 lbs. of potatoes from our garden plot and it was a lot of work to use up all of them before they began sprouting. I've planted fewer ever since, but mostly because of the voles forcing the issue by deciding to start eating my root crops. My grandfather never had blind spots in his rows of potatoes, and I don't know how he did it. I was too young to pay attention to how he was planting his backyard garden back then but he never had a blank space that wasn't producing what it was supposed to be growing. When I have a blank spot in a row, I just stick a flower or herb plant in there to attract beneficial insects. My experience with potatoes, though, always has been that the blind spots indeed allow the nearest plants to outdo themselves and make good use of available space, light, water and nutrients to produce a higher yield per plant.

    I don't remember having any Colorado Potato Beetles at all last year, which was simply divine, but rarely have that sort of luck two years running, so we'll see how it goes this year. In the years that I have them, I hand-pick them, but I think that would be impossible for a potato patch as big as yours. I assume that if you have them, you'll have to spray something.

    I'm already seeing quite a few grasshoppers and crickets, and I'm not happy about it either. I'm going to gear up this week for the start of the Grasshopper Wars of 2015.

    Dawn



  • johnnycoleman
    8 years ago

    Dawn,

    I have used Bt san diego for years to very good effect. http://www.planetnatural.com/bacillus-thuringiensis/

    The trick is use it on the young'uns. I expect to use about two quarts this year. I have seen 90% + knock down over night. I spray it in the evening because Sun light ruins it.

    One thing to understand is, potato vines can withstand A LOT of damage without appreciable production loss. I have sprayed BT San Diego on vines that looked very unlikely to live and seen them recover and produce about the same as other (healthy looking) plants.

    Kennebecs for ever!

    I cultivated all of our potatoes today. They really needed it.

    I expect to run the row hipper, for the first time, next week.

    Johnny

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  • Okiedawn OK Zone 7
    8 years ago

    Johnny, I generally just put on a pair of disposable nitrile gloves and hand-pick the CPBs when they first appear. If I do it every day for about a week, I seldom see any more, apparently having disposed of them before they could reproduce. In a couple of really bad years, I purchased and sprayed the plants with Bonide's "Colorado Potato Beetle Beater", which at that time did have Bt san diego or ten. as its active ingredient. Several years ago, though, Bonide changed their formulation and replaced the Bt with Spinosad. I keep a bottle of Spinosad on the shelf in my potting shed but I rarely use it because it is broad-spectrum and can harm some beneficial insects. I was disappointed with Bonide changed their CPB from a narrow-spectrum Bt ingredient to a more broad-spectrum Spinosad product. It isn't that I don't like Spinosad, but rather that I want to save it to be the big gun I use if all the little guns fail.

    Ironically, Planet Natural still discusses Bt 'tenebrionis' in their info, but they haven't carried it in years, unless they've added it back recently. I don't know of any other product available to the home gardener that still contains it. All of the CPB products I see on store shelves now contain Spinosad instead. It vexes me that I can walk into a store and buy Bt 'kurstaki' and Bt 'israelensis' any day of the week, but Bt 'san diego' and 'tenebrionis" are nowhere to be found. So, when the dastardly little CPBs show up, I handpick until they're all gone. That works for me in my garden, but it wouldn't be possible for a potato patch the size of yours.

    I do use a different form of Spinosad fairly often---a granular product. I use two of them. One is specifically for fire ants, and I sprinkle it directly on their mounds when they pop up in my garden. The other one is Slug-Go Plus, which is a combination product containing both iron phosphate and Spinosad for the control of snails, slugs (the iron phosphate), pill bugs and sow bugs (the Spinosad). The Slug-Go Plus product is larger, more like a pellet than a granular product. I don't mind using Spinosad in that kind of product because only insects that ingest it will be affected by it, and most beneficial insects won't feed on either a granular or pelleted product so it won't harm them the way a liquid spray product potentially could.

    The older I get, the less and less I am willing to use anything at all, synthetic or organic in nature, in my garden, if I can avoid it. Of course, I broke my own rule last year and sprayed for grasshoppers with a synthetic pesticide and never will do that again. It wasn't worth it.

    After looking at the 2015 Aphis Grasshopper forecast yesterday, I ordered Semaspore yesterday. I already am seeing too many hoppers, and have been for almost two months. We had too many hot winter days, I guess, and the hoppers were out, on and off, throughout the winter, which is not normal. I only ordered a 1-lb. bag, but I was tempted to order 5-lbs. and thought it would be dreamy (though expensive) to order a 50-lb. bag, which likely would have been overkill. Since it has a relatively short shelf life, I try to order only as much as I'll use in April and May. I generally catch them early on with the Semaspore when they are in the younger instars and it works great, but it isn't useful at the hotter temperatures we have in place when the swarms of them start flying into the green garden areas as the rangeland dries up.

    My potatoes are looking ridiculously happy between all the rain and the warmer weather (though I suspect the next couple of days will feel too hot and humid to us humans). They're probably about as tall and wide as they ever have been during the first week of April in any year. Now, I hope I didn't jinx them by saying that.

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  • chickencoupe
    Original Author
    8 years ago

    I've come to love spinosad. I don't go wild with it in the garden, but drench soils with grubs and/or pill bugs. I use it more on tent caterpillars and occasionally in rabbit water bottles for ear mites. I never planned to feed it to them even though it has been shown dogs can handle it. I soaked my buns fur in it one time after treating his ears to help kill the mites. Little bugger licked it off his fur. Cured himself of mites. lol Now, I put a touch in the water.

  • Okiedawn OK Zone 7
    8 years ago

    One reason I use it as little as possible is that the more often you use something, the more likely that pests will build up a tolerance for it. Once pests can tolerate it, it loses its effectiveness. Spinosad is great, but I guarantee you that folks will go overboard with it and use it like mad and eventually pests will develop a tolerance of it (with Spinosad I believe this was happening within about 5 years of its introduction) and then it will cease to be effective. It happens pretty much with every pesticide, organic or synthetic, sooner or later. That's why they have to keep coming up with different ones all the time....to replace the popular ones that have been overused to the point that pests become tolerant. In fact, if you and I went searching the world-wide web we'd probably find tons of instances, world-wide, where tolerance of or resistance to Spinosad's active ingredients already is occurring. When they started adding Spinosad to some pet products, I groaned because I knew such widespread use was likely to lead to an even quicker development of resistance or tolerance. So, enjoy it while you've got it. With some pests, tolerance to a new pesticide can develop in just a few generations, and most pests have multiple generations per year. I don't even use it for general fire ant mounds on our property except for the ones in my veggie garden. I want to use it as sparingly as possible so that the fire ants on our property don't develop a tolerance of it or a total resistance to it. It will happen eventually, but hopefully by the time it does, we'll have something else organic that is just as effective on fire ants.

    In my garden, I always start with the least toxic and most narrow-spectrum method possible, and slowly escalate to more toxic and more broad-spectrum over time if needed. For me, most of the time, hand-picking pests, while time-consuming, is the least toxic (except to the pests I'm hand-picking and destroying) and most narrow-spectrum method. It is just so time-consuming and I don't particularly enjoy doing it.

  • chickencoupe
    Original Author
    8 years ago

    Good to know. I'll continue to use it sparingly. I'm glad I learned to raise worms. that experience keeps me mindful of the critters in the soil when I use Spinosad. Speaking of, we've seen so many many large earthworms. I'm splurging on another round bale, already, because the deep mulch works so well.


  • Okiedawn OK Zone 7
    8 years ago

    Deep mulch does work incredibly well. I used it from our first year here, courtesy of Fred, who gave me 4 large round bales of hay that were a couple of years old. It improves your soil faster than anything else you can do, only the improvement comes from the top down. I still spent a lot of time working amendments into the ground more deeply in order to get soil improvement more quickly 6-8-10-12" down, with the depth increasing over time as the tilth of the red clay improved. I love hay and straw and also grass clippings and chopped/shredded leaves as well. It took 6 or 8 years of soil improvement before I could double dig the dense red clay.

    In those early years you couldn't dig any deeper than an inch or two with any traditional small hand tool like a trowel, or any deeper then 3 or 4 inches with a shovel, spade or fork. Even a mattock didn't penetrate the clay very far....and we broke lots of tool handles in those early years. So, in one sense, the hay and other organic matter fixed the soil enough over time that we finally could use tools to dig more deeply. Now, I can double dig (and that is at/below grade level, so with the raised bed atop a double dug area, what I really have is triple-dug beds) almost anywhere I want in the front garden and just begin to see the unimproved clay at the bottom of the double dug area. Sometimes now the soil looks so good that I can almost forget what it was like there when we started. I don't double dig much any more because I don't want to disturb the soil's tilth. I also went no-till with most of the planting area this year so that I wouldn't hurt the earthworms and other desirable soil-dwelling creatures. I rototilled a couple of raised bed areas that were too wet to plant but that was more to fluff up the soil so it would dry out some on a few hot days in the upper 80s. Going no-till is extremely hard for me----old habits are hard to break----but I am trying.

    I greedily snatch up every bit of grass clippings we can produce by mowing our couple of unforested acres in late winter because that helps me get a good layer of mulch on the entire front garden at the start of the season. Then, we don't mow the pastures again until summer when either high fire danger or a rampant snake population make us feel like we have to cut them for safety's sake. I'd like to mow the pastures more often just to get more grass clippings for mulch, but then we wouldn't have the abundant growth of forbs and grasses in the fields for all the wild critters.

    And, I should have added that a key way to prevent the development of tolerance and resistance to pesticides is to alternate, using several different pesticides which will slow down the development of tolerance among your local pest population. In some lab studies involving Spinosad tolerance, as soon as they stopped using Spinosad regularly and substititued something else, the tolerance of/resistance to Spinosyn began to fade. I assume that lab experiment has been replicated in the field, but haven't looked for data that would show it has been.


    chickencoupe thanked Okiedawn OK Zone 7
  • chickencoupe
    Original Author
    8 years ago

    If I'd had a tiller last week, some of it would be tilled. Still, for a residential area I have such wonderful life when I cover it and they do such a good job. I have no dear to bother it all. I have really no genuine concern for rattlers or too many coons or possum, just the occasional, but sufficient trees and unkempt areas to complete the ecological system which gets invited under the shelter of the mulch. Today, in fact I lifted up my mulch atop the peas and found too many pill bugs. But I also beheld one of those very large black beetles ... the good kind. It's all good as long as I keep it covered for them all. I am finding that a foot of hay is preferable.

    I simply cannot imagine trying to amend the soil that ya'll started out with. I often wonder why so many are willing to throw money at good compost and soil and pot up until I'm reminded of that awful red clay that lies just outside our fence line and when you describe breaking those tools. Clearly, this was farmed decades past. We are very blessed.


    I'm so tired, but I'm working in the worst part of the garden. I found portions of gumbo-type clay about 2 foot down. Very glad i'm digging hugels in that area.

  • soonergrandmom
    8 years ago

    My soil looks wonderful and the only thing I have ever added are leaves, chicken manure, mushroom compost and cardboard. I add fruit peels and anything the chickens don't eat, of course. All of that was free except for the mushroom compost which I pick up at the mushroom grower for a reasonable price. In the early days I tried to make enough compost but have had better luck just adding to the top. For a number of years, I tilled everything, but for several years now I just use the tiller to prepare a trench for the potatoes, and for other things I just dig a hole and plant. Right now I am delayed by wet soil, but I am able to plant about half of my garden. We are 82 today and breezy so maybe we will get some drying.. My potatoes and the last peas I planted are starting to come up. I added some bush beans and lettuce today and planted the remainder of the broccoli transplants. Some insect is already feasting on my plants. We have another hail threat this week so I'm not adding many tomatoes until that is over. Now if I could just solve the Bermuda problem. You folks in the more southern areas make me feel like I am running way behind, but I'm just a few days past our last freeze.

  • chickencoupe
    Original Author
    8 years ago

    Glad to hear it's finally warming up for you. I'm not far behind ya, that's for sure. I am sick of mud !!


  • johnnycoleman
    8 years ago
    last modified: 8 years ago

    Bon,

    Last year I canned some golf ball size Kennebecs. I just opened a quart of them for supper. I applied salted EVO then shook some salt and pepper on them. Put them in the oven (425F) for 12 minutes on a cookie sheet.

    WOW! They smell and taste great! I love simple wholesome food.

    Note I didn't use any salt when canning them.

    chickencoupe thanked johnnycoleman
  • chickencoupe
    Original Author
    8 years ago

    That's a great idea.


  • jimmy56_gw (zone 6 PA)
    8 years ago

    Bon, Would you mind sharing your recipe for canning potatoes.

    chickencoupe thanked jimmy56_gw (zone 6 PA)
  • chickencoupe
    Original Author
    8 years ago

    That would be Mr. Coleman's recipe. I'd like to have it, too. :)

  • luvncannin
    8 years ago

    The http://nchfp.uga.edu/ has all the info for safely canning potatoes.

    I hope to do some this year too.

    chickencoupe thanked luvncannin
  • johnnycoleman
    8 years ago

    I use USDA canning recipes. USDA canning recipes



    chickencoupe thanked johnnycoleman
  • jimmy56_gw (zone 6 PA)
    8 years ago

    luvncannin, that site says to use a pressure canner, Can you do it in a hot boiling bath since I don't own a canner?

  • luvncannin
    8 years ago

    Personally I would not risk it. Potatoes can carry a variety of risks but especially because they are low acid. Water bath does not get hot enough for low acid foods. The Harvest forum here have a lot of experts that can explain it all better than I can.

  • johnnycoleman
    8 years ago

    Yup, only the wise survive.
    Pressure canning USDA

    USDA experts have scientifically determined the need for pressure canning low acid foods.



  • jimmy56_gw (zone 6 PA)
    8 years ago

    Thanks, So what brand of canner is everyone using or recommend?

  • Okiedawn OK Zone 7
    8 years ago

    You can go to the Harvest Forum here at Garden Web/Houzz to read all kinds of posts about the different brands of pressure canners and who likes which one best and why. That is the forum where all the canning experts hang out. Once you go the the Harvest Forum you can do a search and pull up oodles of old threads on pressure canners.

    One of the most important things is to be sure you buy a pressure canner, not a pressure cooker. They are not the same thing.

    One suggestion I'd make is that you buy one of the larger ones. Don't buy the smallest one available to save a few bucks because it will cost you more in the long run since it only will can very small batches. If you're having to do twice as many batches because you bought a smaller canner, it costs you more in time and energy costs in the long run.

    I have a Presto and have had it for decades. Before that I had a Mirro. However, most of the canning that I do is simple water bath canning because the foods I prefer to can happen to be the ones you can using a Boiling Water Bath/canner. I simply freeze (we have three deep freezers) the items that most people can in a pressure canner because we like the texture of veggies that have been frozen and then cooked better than those that have been canned and then cooked.

    With potatoes, I don't can them. I just store them in our tornado shelter and they last for many months that way. With each type of food that I preserve, I choose the preservation method that works best for the way we ultimately like to eat that food item. We like our potatoes fresh, so I don't can them. If we liked canned potatoes, then I'd take the time to can some of our crop. I use all the various food storage methods (canning, dehydration, fermentation, freezing and root cellaring), but not all methods for all foods.

    At the website of the National Center for Home Food Preservation, you will find all the government-approved and safety-tested canning and other food preservation methods. You should never deviate from the approved methods because that's a quick way to potentially harm or kill somebody with improperly-preserved foods. I cannot emphasize that enough. Safety always has to come first.


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