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  • From: grizzdover AT gmail.com
  • To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] Potato furrows and eggplant (separately)
  • Date: Sun, 4 Nov 2012 00:50:35 -0500

I harvest potatoes using a middle-buster and can dig down about a foot below soil level with a 35 hp tractor.  I also now plant potatoes with a Holland Rotary One transplanter (without making a furrow first).  I think a middle buster would be a good investment as you could make a furrow to plant in (and fill in furrow instead of hilling) plus use it to harvest with.  One issue may be that if you make a deep planting furrow with the middle buster, it may not be able to harvest any spuds that grow below the depth of the initial furrow.

Both 'Traviata' and 'Black Beauty' produced well for me in the unusually dry hot summer season here in Iowa this year.  Another great stand out was 'Clara' (large white eggplant), but the bugs were very found of this and many had small holes around the entire fruit.  Not enough to make them un-usable, but did not produce as many "marketable" ones because of the blemishes.  I watered our eggplant like crazy this year but they still set fruit later than "normal".  I believe eggplants are another one of those plants (like tomatoes, green beans, etc.) that when they get too hot they abort their flowers to stay alive.

Ben Saunders
Granger, Iowa
www.wabisabi-farm.com

On Sat, Nov 3, 2012 at 8:52 PM, Carla Maness <manessfarm AT gmail.com> wrote:
Pam,
We use a middle buster to plant our potatoes, and it works great. We use the middle buster for the furrow, then we drop in the seed potato, and then we cover with our hiller disk set up. We used to try and drop the seed potato in by hand, but we plant nearly a thousand pounds of potatoes and it took forever. We now hook our mechanical transplanter up and I sit and ride while dropping the potatoes in the pre-made furrow. It's a little harder to judge spacing this way, but I can get pretty close and it's so much faster and easier.

Eggplant: We grow Nadia, Night Shadow, and Santana for large eggplant. Production was down due to extreme heat and drought, but with this combination we managed to have eggplant every week for market. When one variety was lagging behind, one of the others was picking up the slack. It's a combination that we grow every year with good results. 

Carla
Perkins, OK 


On Sat, Nov 3, 2012 at 4:08 PM, Pam Twin Oaks <pam AT twinoaks.org> wrote:
Two things I'd like to hear the collective wisdom on:

What do folks use to make furrows for potatoes? We used walk-behind rototillers with attachments for years. This past year we got a set-up for the tractor, but it didn't work well. It used a set of discs arranged to push soil to each side. But it wasn't deep enough and we got a lot of green potatoes. I've heard of some people using a middle-buster - is this the best thing? (If so, I'm putting two on my wish list right now!)

Second, can anyone recommend a good heat-tolerant eggplant variety? We like large traditional shape purple-black ones. We love Nadia, but this summer it refused to set fruit for a while. Are there "hot-set" eggplants? I need a reliable productive one, probably a hybrid.

Pam, twin oaks Community, central Virginia, zone 7a
--
Pam Dawling
 
Author of Sustainable Market Farming, Intensive Vegetable Production on a Few Acres
http://www.sustainablemarketfarming.com/
http://www.facebook.com/SustainableMarketFarming
http://www.newsociety.com/Books/S/Sustainable-Market-Farming




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