Winter Harvesting Potatoes

[Tom Wagner]

Sometimes I think that as moderator of the Potato Forum here on TVille, I wait for folks to bring up questions for me to answer. It is obvious from what I think, and I might as well offer my opinions, it is that I need to initiate ideas, trends, research, how to's, and the like because I think most readers know I am full of it!

I get bored when no one is posting here. Maybe the answer is to just post myself. If anyone responds with a balance of positives and negative, then it is a zero sum game!

I used to post on another forum that was strictly potatoes. It has been boring over there too! I have not posted there for years. Let's find something to talk about, will we?

This is probably the most silly subject folks have ever come up against. WINTER HARVESTING POTATOES.

I am an old-fashioned conservative in more ways than I care to admit. I don't like to spend money for something when I don't have to. Paying for potato storage in some cooler somewhere, where the owners may gripe about rotton potato smells or worst, liquids running out of the bins, drives me up a wall.

Solution: Store in the ground 'til you need them for eating or planting.

I was out yesterday digging potatoes . I live in a climate that allows for that. The temps are generally this time of year in the mid to upper 30's in the day to just above freezing to just below that at night.

I had some rare help yesterday from a couple of mid thirties organic growers that wanted to buy seed potatoes from me to plant this spring. They wanted first crack at what I have and wanted to see the potatoes coming out of the ground. The young men were like young boys playing marbles! They identified the ones they wanted to plant

Anybody else doing that? I don't think so, but let me know otherwise.

Tom Wagner

[rxkeith]

a guy we know (very unique individual) who used to live in detroit in one of the BBB (bad beyond belief) hoods used to store his potatos in a garbage can buried in the ground. all you could see was the lid that looked like it was just laying on the ground. it would be harder to do that in the U.P due to heavy snowfall much of the winter. a local farmer has a storage room built into the side of a hill. (pretty neat) our potatos are keeping rather well in some unheated parts of an old cold drafty house that we are renting in ironwood, mi. no fun going outside. windchill was 40 below here this morning. the dogs went outside just long enough to do their business then zipped back inside.

keith in calumet

[tuk50]

I store my carrots, turnips, and leeks that way, but sorry to say I never have any spuds left. Maybe I should think about planting more spuds, huh!
Just to keep you from getting bored, question: do you think I could keep sweettaters this way if I just cut off the vines a week or so before the first frost and mulch with a few inches of straw? The reason I thought about it, is yesterday when I dug a few carrots for supper I found a nice little sweetater still hiding in the ground and couldn't find anything on google about it. The sweetater was firm and tasted good when I microwaved it.8)

[orflo]

I would love to do so, I have a friend who harvested his potatoes last week. But if I leave my potatoes in the ground during wintertime I have several problems. First of all mice, they eat the whole lot, I recently discovered the maint part of my Jerusalem Artichokes (estimated 40 pounds) has vanished, eaten by mice who find their winter supply in left-over tubers, I can't grow artichokes neither, they're just eaten immediately.
These mice live under the ground and it's hard to get rid of them. Second, this is late blight country, potatoes infested with phytophtora inf. won' t survive, they just rot away and any leftovers will become a new source of possible infection.(My friend harvested Gasoré, which is very resistant to late blight). A few years ago, a farmer planted some potatoes during autumn, he reasoned the winters were getting milder and they could stay unharmed. Unfortunately for him, we did have a cold winter then, so he lost everything. But i know in milder areas potatoes are grown durning winter ( parts of Spain, Portugal). I think it's better to grow non-blight strains or even solanum juzepczukii or phureja or other botanical different strains, they're just more resistent,
Frank

[Tom Wagner]

Fantastic!

I am getting some bites in the old pond.

First of all, really cold climates makes it difficult to leave potatoes in situ without mulches, or at least without harvesting and reburying and mulching. My objective of leaving the potatoes in the ground is one to encourage local produce without artificial storage and expense. My efforts are to promote the permaculture and sustainability of potato growing. I want to winter potatoes by never don't do nothing. (triple negative intended)

Sweet potatoes as winter digs I have not tried, so conjecture is all I can offer.

I don't have so much a problem of mice but swans. Big white swans that love the potatoes in the lowest wet parts of the field. If they eat potatoes that are wet and frozen, they tend to get drunk on all the fermented potatoes. Big, cute, drunk swans!!! Funny seeing them do their "Swan Dance" but no worry, they ain't driving--they're flying! By leaving potatoes in the field, I am feeding the swans more than the wheat grass they would find in neighboring fields!

Orflo says that in Belgium...

this is late blight country, potatoes infested with phytophtora inf. won' t survive, they just rot away and any leftovers will become a new source of possible infection.(My friend harvested Gasoré, which is very resistant to late blight).

Interesting! That means for the last four winters in which I finish my digging of last years crop no sooner than April, I must be (inadvertently) selecting for tuber blight resistance?

The lucky thing about my potato breeding work is that I counted up the so called Late Blight resistant potato clones used for breeding around the world, and I have had fully one half of all clones used for that purpose. In my trials with Gasore, aka Irish Red Gold, is that I have much better clones than that line for Phytophtora tolerance, etc.

Frank continues...I think it's better to grow non-blight strains or even solanum juzepczukii or phureja or other botanical different strains, they're just more resistant

I am growing many wild species of potatoes and using them in breeding within the species and in interspecific crosses as well. I have not had good luck with juzepczukii for the culinary qualities and such, but phureja lines are indeed important for L.B tolerance. My Skagit Valley Gold, mostly phureja in its pedigree is showing good results for me against this awful pathogen. My crosses of Juan Valdez (an American Russet crossed to sl. resistant Juanita of Mexico) X Low Bay ( a lowland tropical potato) is showing super vine and tuber resistance.

In some of my many plots I have shown folks commercial type potatoes completed killed by Late Blight and numerous lines of my crosses and international collections with virtually no damage!

Another thing that I like about (Winter Harvesting) is that I am selecting for varieties that set deeper in the soil horizen and thus provide a higher percent of unfrozen tubers. Any variety that cannot stand wet soil will develop swollen lenticels. Any potato that has blemished tubers will also fail to be selected out of the ground. Potatoes that have a short dormancy may sprout pre-maturely and will be limited in eating or breeding use. Also, any varmint damage such as gnawing on the tubers must have superb healing qualities or they will rot.

The bottom line: Breeding and producing potatoes through the pressure of winter freezes, etc., is almost Lamarckian in the obvious benefits. "Inheritance of acquired characters"

The intrinsic thing about an old timer like me is that a lot of things learned the hard way leads one to find the easy way. My folks taught me that a boy who has it the easy way early in life will have it the hard way later in life!

Tom Wagner

[cdntomato]

Re wintering of sweet potatoes: where you are growing is a bit different than where I am growing but some benchmark temperatures seem to apply, according to Ken Allan, sweet potato guru of the north (and therefore winters?). First, don't winter over your seed potatoes. And for eating potatoes without loss of or change in texture, etc. the ambiant soil temperature should not drop below 50F, ideally 60F.

Jennifer, with access to purpose-built cold storage plus a nice root cellar, lucky girl (less work for me that way as the growing area not easy to access during my winter months)

[kktwahoo]

Tom,

We would love to winter harvest potatoes, but yesterday, and today are -10 F - you mention mulch, but how low can mulch protect them?

Keep thinking!

[tuk50]

I have not checked my soil temp in the winter, so I guess that is something I will get done in the next day or so. I would guess my soil is probably 50 or above, but not sure, since the one lone tater I got was of good quality.
Question, why not save seed taters by overwintering if my soil temps are in the 50's, just wondering, not fussing at you, since I'm totally ignorant about this and trying to plan strategy for future winter garden. So far this winter one night last week dipped to 26degrees and the days run in the 60's. We will probably get to low 20's or upper teens at least once this winter in Feb, but not very often. Right now I save my seed taters in a paper sack in a closet, and so far this year I've only lost two sweettaters and no spuds to date. 8)

[Tom Wagner]

Kent,

I grew up in Kansas about 180 miles driving distance from you, so I think I can appreciate your cold fairly well.

Wintering potatoes within the row as they were grown would require a cover crop of wheat and straw hay a foot deep or more to do any good. kinda like wintering over asparagus.




When I made this post I thought I was clear with my wording.



Winter harvesting does not mean the same as winter storage. Winter harvesting means the potatoes have never been dug, are in high ridges to prevent water logging, and mild winters or heavy mulching in cold climates.

Winter storage is where the potatoes are dug and repacked for storage through the Winter and early Sping.

The problem with potatoes in Kansas and Nebraska is that they are mature when the ground is really hot and left the ground there is not good for them especially by October, when the ground finally gets cold.



Potato Cellars, (coal cellars as my folks had) are deep in the ground where the temps are close to 54 F. That is not cold enough and would be too warm from July harvest to October. Potatoes would always sprout on me in Kansas by October and would make any further storage irrelevant.



The Sweet Potato storage and winter harvesting is too many years away from my current research.



To tuk,



Arizona might work for keeping potatoes at a winter harvest method but then again, there are day time heat issues at that latitude which may be problematic. Seed potatoes from winter harvested or even early sping harvest for seed potatoes is fine if you can do it. The best potatoes coming out of the ground should be replanted, but any off type...no!

[kktwahoo]

Tom,

Kansas, huh? Wow, Dorothy is my first cousin, as I was born in far northwest Kansas!

What temp do taters need to be stored at for keeping seed potatoes? 41 F or below, down to 35?

Tom, I sent you a PM, so check it out, thanks.

[orflo]

The root cellar is quite common over here, partially because things can freeze for a few weeks(but the last time we had that was about twenty years ago), and partially because things rot in the wet winters. As far as late blight is concerned :in The Netherlands they had (or still have,I don't know) a law a few years ago:"no potatoes must be left in the open, on the fields, field borders,...No potatoes may resprout wherever there are some left, the sprouts must be removed immediately . Only well raised potatoes should be used for planting out in the spring". In fact, I think they were right, potato growth was nearly impossible because of the phytophtora (which can occur here from end of May, nothing late about it ). I live in an area where lots of potatoes are cultivated, acres and acres, farmers just leave the leftovers on their lands or make big heaps of leftovers, which is really no good.And yes, these potatoes do overwinter without any problem(at least the ones lying on the surface), sometimes you see fields of potato sprouts late March, if there is a warm spell.
And yes, you could be selecting a blight resisting potato when you leave them, I just wonder if the rotten potatoes right beside the other ones aren't a major source of spreading the disease again. But after all, if they are resistant, that's just the way to find out. I'm trying sarpo mira this year, and maybe sarpo axona, just to test their resistance.I guess your Skagit Valley Gold is unavailable over here?

[Granny]

If you check Putting Food By, the author gives detailed instructions for some pretty inventive ways to store potatoes and other similar crops for the winter. Most of her methods are, I believe, from New England as she was an old-time Vermonter.