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  • From: Pam Twin Oaks <pam AT twinoaks.org>
  • To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [Market-farming] Potato Planting and Digging
  • Date: Sun, 6 Jun 2010 11:13:43 -0400

Potato Planting: for our June planting, we plant, cover, hill up and mulch the same or next day. We unroll big round bales of hay side by side (no gaps) across the full width of the patch. After the plants start to emerge we walk through once and help extract any shoots trapped by over-thick hay. I guess we aim for 4"of hay, but it does vary. Most of the shoots make it up through at least 4" soil plus 4" hay, without our help. The mulch prevents most weed problems, and helps keep the soil cool and moist through July, August, September. We're zone 7, central Virginia.

I *believe* the planting style where the potatoes are not hilled but just covered with mulch needs 12" mulch. Never done it. Maybe 12" is when you don't cover with soil either.

Potato Digging: We bought the Chechi and Magli SP100 last year, from Ferrari Tractor
http://www.checchiemagli.com/Potato-machines-SP-100-Sez2-7-1.asp
We've only used it once so far. It digs one row at a  time, while the tractor straddles two rows. It is fairly gentle with the potatoes. Ours were mulched, so we found we had to pull the mulch off first. Likewise, it needs any potato vines or weeds mowed off in good time to crisp up in the sun and get raked off, before harvest. It's an elegant small machine, can be used in fairly tight spaces, but does need one extra row width to start out getting the first row up. (Our tractor needs 6' width). We had an initial snag getting the right PTO shaft, as the one that came with it wasn't the right length. After that was sorted out, we were happy.

Pam, Twin Oaks Community, central Virginia


  • [Market-farming] Potato Planting and Digging, Pam Twin Oaks, 06/06/2010

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