The water needs to be all the way at the bottom where the roots are at - which is below the point where you put the seed potato.

The rest of the area from that point up really doesn't need water.

A guy by the name of jbest123 on here made a PVC thing that irrigates from the point he put in the seed potato and down for this reason. It also helps to prevent potato rot as well.

Here is a link that might be useful: BsnTech Gardening Blog

The water is needed only by the roots, that is where you put down the seeds.
Anything above the roots are just the stems burried in ground and they do not need water, just like the parts that are in the air.
So you just deep water them from the base of hills.
I have had stem rotting due to too much rain.
Depending on the soil, humidity,and temperature potatoes require much less watering than anything else.
Because you plant them in a hole to begin with and the root do not grow upward but vertivally and horizontally.
If you see them droop in the afternoon, probably they are dry and thirsty.

I have a question of bsntech & cyrus. It sounds like this is a type of potato bin, or potato tower (4 feet tall).

If that is correct, I somehow thought that the idea of adding the soil and burying the stems was that new roots would form in the layers above the original roots and that new potato tubers would be formed higher and higher into the bin.

Have I misunderstood?

Thanks

Bob

I have a question for any potato experts. It sounds like this is a type of potato bin, or potato tower or potato box (4 feet tall).
If that is correct, I somehow thought that the idea of gradually adding the soil and burying the stems to something like 4 feet was that new roots would form in the stems and branches above the original roots and that new potato tubers would be formed higher and higher into the bin.

Have I misunderstood?

Thanks

Bob

Same question as Bob - not sure if the buried stems are new roots or not - if they need water.

we have two acres of potatoes. we had the same questions about watering and hilling.

we talked to the old tater farmers to gather info.

we derived with a plan of watering (we use sprinklers) ever five days for twelve hours. we cultivate and hill on the 14th day.

of course we use a tractor for preparing the soil, planting the potatoes, cultivating, and we also have a potato digger.

thinking about digging up a hunk of dirt 3 feet by 8 feet by 4 feet just sounds hard.

i am always looking for some way to cut down the work.

at least that is in our potato fields. i have 350 feet of potatoes (Yukon Gold, Pontiac and LaRosa) in mygarden also those are our table spuds. the field spuds will go in our root cellar.

some folk water every 10 days but we are in a dry area and if the taters get dry they start to harden or set the skins. before we harvest we cut the water off for at least 10-15 days to let the skins cure so we get less cuts when we harvest.

any how this is how we do potatoes. for what it is worth.

Dean

Arn't the tubers connected to the root system, and therefore at all points in the tub/container so anything below the top soil is going to need watering? *don't know*

Arn't the tubers connected to the root system, and therefore at all points in the tub/container so anything below the top soil is going to need watering? *don't know*

Last year was my first year with potatoes. I only have two 10 foot rows. I laid down a soaker hose when I planted my seed potatoes and only watered if it didn't rain for a week or was very hot. The potatoes produced a large amount for such a small area last year and appear to be on track again this year. When I turned on the soaker hose I will let it run for 30 - 45 minutes or until I remember to shut it off.

Hi Bob,
Red Potatoes and such as these will indeed grow potatoes on the stem (above the cluster of tubers) but is totally NOT worth the trouble,hill your potatoes by 12" and that will be more than sufficient to get you the most production with the least amount of work. I have a few video's I did last year that proved that with extended hilling you could produce tubers further up the stem...but IMHO ...totally not worth it,not enough value for the extra work....

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The next link for Potatoes

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m22kEswxHHw

The latest "How to Hill" video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-Dkx9xolMw

Here is a link that might be useful: Harvesting Early Potatoes 2009 #1

Thankyou, Jon. I enjoyed your Youtube videos - watched a number of them!

So, you are basically saying that you don't think that the idea of potato bins (4 feet of hilling) is really worthwhile(?) I had been led to believe that late season potatoes (or indeterminate varieties) would continue to set tubers most of the way up the stem as the hilling continued.

I will still press on with my experiment but it is good to hear from the more experienced.

thanks again for sharing your experiences here and on Youtube!

Bob

IME, which goes back 40 years or more, potatoes don't need much water. Unless you suffer a long, pro longed drought, they shouldn't need any additional watering besides what falls from the sky.

YMMV,

Mike

Hi Bob,
Yeah... Definitely go for it... Gardening is Half experimentation, and we can all learn from each other... just make sure you document it...if at all possible, so we can all grow ,without having to make the exact same mistakes....

I am trying container potatoes this year. I was going to build bins, but I read so many stories of failures with the bins, I decided to try big deep containers first (sort of bins?). So far, things are doing really well. I put the seed potatoes into the bins outside early April. They started poking through the dirt on 5/1. The varieties I planted are: katahdin, all-blue, and german butterball. I have 7 bins total. 4 were made from 2 55 gallon plastic drums which I cut in half and drilled lots of holes into the bottoms of. 3 are round plastic bins I bought at one of the big box stores. I planted the pieces of seed potato in miracle grow potting mix and I have been mounding them with a mixture of topsoil and peat moss. I have just watered from the top, soaking them really well every 3 days or so. We'll see how it goes, either I will get lots of potatoes, or not. Either way, I don't have a lot invested and it has been kind of cool to see them come from cut up potato pieces to what they are now. :-) Here are some pictures:

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All 7 bins are full to the top now and I covered the dirt with some straw.

I just wanted to share my potato experiment and let you know that I just water from the top and have not experienced any problems so far. Of course, I may not get any potatoes come harvest time either, lol.

I did the potato bin thing last year.

Failed miserably.

I had a 3 x 2 foot box. I started out at one foot deep and planted the potatoes about 6 inches down. As they grew, I added more boards and covered most of the potatoes up.

The bin got to 2.5 feet tall. Unfortunately, I planted four potatoes and only one survived the constant hilling.
In addition, I only got potatoes just under the surface after the box was built up. Only about one pound worth from the one Kennebec plant.

So there wasn't any potatoes from the bottom of the bin up until about the two foot mark. They were all within the top six inches of the bin.

I'm growing the Kennebec potatoes this year in a raised bed garden and in some small buckets. They are wider than five-gallon buckets but only about 3/4 the height. I started by putting the potato seed about an inch from the bottom of the container and then filled the container half-way with soil. I've since added mulched leaves to fill the containers. Anxious to see how this turns out.

The hilling of potatoes is a pain in the butt. I've seen where many people (looks like there was a photo above) that make trenches that are about a foot deep. They then add their potatoes and add a few inches of soil. As the potatoes then get above the main soil level, the trenches are just backfilled.

Still kind of like hilling up, but not quite.

Here is a link that might be useful: BsnTech Gardening Blog

Well, we will see. I have not set my expectations high, so if I fail, no big deal. Sine I am home now and have access to more pictures, here is one more of the "bins" I did. The white ones are only maybe 24" or so deep, so not quite as deep as the 4' bins.

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Yeah, most of my plants have wilted and died. I don't know if that is underwatering (I have been watering them and it's rained a couple times) or overwatering or trauma from adding dirt. I'm only about knee high at this point and 1/2 was dirt and 1/2 was some old hay so it was not too heavy. Maybe I composted them. Though I tell ya the best potatoes I [accidentally] grow are the scraps that grow in my compost before I turn it! I want to try again - is it too late to replant (or just add some more seeds to the bin)

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Nice looking container there!

You still should be able to get a crop of potatoes in.

Strange about yours - I would think that if you just added straw and not dirt that they would have survived.

You may have tried to add the straw too soon though. I hilled up all of my potatoes just by a few inches (all the soil I had available right now) after the potatoes were at least a foot tall. So I only covered up maybe 1/4 of the stem out of the ground.

Here is a link that might be useful: BsnTech Gardening Blog

I've never grown potatoes before, but this year I'm trying them in the "bags" that Gardener's Supply sells (stiff, thickish felt-like landscape fabric sort of contraptions). So far so good. The potato plants are about 3.5 to 4 feet tall, flowering up a storm, and I've "hilled" them to 1 foot. The rest will be mulch, I think. If they turn out to be productive, I'll do it again. The bags seem pretty sturdy and should last several years. They're easy to water without over-watering because the excess easily drains away. Very, very easy to plant. AND I can move them if/when I need to.

Here is a link that might be useful: Potato bags