Growing potatoes under black plastic

[svalli]

I dug up one more variety yesterday. The leaves had a bit green on them, but the potatoes were already so large, that they do not need to grow anymore. Week ago I dug up couple varieties from he field, where we have no mulch and the potatoes were much smaller than the ones grown with plastic mulch.
The plastic mulch definitely helps retaining moisture and made a big difference in a dry summer like we had. I do not look forward to wet summers, but it will be a good test to see how this method works in our typical rainy summer.

Picture below shows what I got from 29 seed potatoes of Mozart. When all were picked up we got two full 45 liter vegetable crates. Biggest spud weighed almost 700 g (1½ lb) and there are quite many which are over a pound. This variety is excellent yellow flesh baking potato. Mozart on the field was planted couple of weeks later than these and are still growing, so it will interesting to compare the size of those to these. Now we are getting the typical autumn rains and hopefully the potatoes will keep growing until the first frost.

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