I am in North Texas and my potatoes always start off really strong. About halfway through growth they seem to just stop growing. I harvest them about a month later because they are dying back and I get mostly medium and small potatoes. I have never gotten large potatoes.
How can I increase the size of these? I grow in good compost potatoe bags. I also add shredded leaves as they get bigger to keep covering. My instinct is yelling me I over watered them at some point which caused early death, but I am unsure. Any pointers?
The image is a harvest of 4 potato bags. The bigger ones are about 2 eggs in size.
by Alternative_Lab6417
11 Comments
Small ponds grow small fish. Use a bigger container or grow them in the ground. Do not crowd. Start with a whole seed potato, not a grocery store potato and use organic fertilizer.
You want lunkers? The waxy potatoes are better as smaller sized potatoes. If you want potatoes for the large size, you can better grow russets
I listen to a gardening show and one of the hosts says to remove the flowers to get larger tubers. I remove garlic flowers, scapes, to get larger bulbs, so you might try that.
Before you plant them remove all but 1 or 2 of the chits. The more chits the more small spuds you’ll get.
If you leave only 1 or 2 chits you should get larger spuds
There are many variables at play, you shouldn’t make assumptions based on one single season doing it one single way. Weather from one season to the next can have a bigger effect on yield than fertilizing or not fertilizing.
Yukon golds aren’t really known for being huge potatoes. Most of the ones I see for sale are approximately the size of baseballs.
I’m growing canadian gold. They are inherently smallish. Go for a late season variety for the bigguns.
It’s a night shade. I’ve seen that peppers prefer “dappled” shade. Try shade cloth. If you are in the shade try sunnier location?
I don’t know I haven’t had luck with potatoes. Squirrels dig them up.
Well, there’s a couple of things going on here. One, like most plants potatoes will grow until they reach the limits of their environment. So grow bags being little will limit the size of your potatoes. Two, the mutant fruits and vegetables at the grocery store are pumped so full of fertilizer to get to that size. Unless that’s what you want to eat, I wouldn’t recommend going that route.
Those look great! I don’t think north Texas (I live 20 miles north of DFW) is prime potato property. The pH of our water is usually high and potatoes like 6-6.5. Mulching with pine needles and mixing in peat moss will help drop pH.
I haven’t tried this trick, but I have heard that removing all but 1-2 of the eyes will produce larger potatoes.