Potato growing

I was talking about growing potatoes, and I always did them, as I had read in a book, chit earlies, plant then heap up as fourth set of leaves appear

One guy who is very succesfull, said NAH farmers do not do that, they plant deep then crop

He has raised beds, drops them eyes up down a twelve inch hole, fills, and has good crops

Any thoughts on this ?

Jack McH

 

I prefer to earth up when the plant has some leaves. I leave earthing up until frost is forecast, thus I have a means of keeping the frost off. If no frost comes I earth up when the time is about right to make a single ridge.

I suppose earthing up, covering leaves, means the plant has put effort into making the leaves that are then wrecked by being earthed up, which deep planting would avoid, but deep planting requires a lot of energy to be used up to get above-ground.

For a commercial grower a single-pass technique of deep-planting (or plant and ridge in one pass) must be more cost effective than multiple passes of the field?

 

I plant mine around 4-6" deep, mid-April. I earth up as and when a frost is forecast. If there was no frost, I would still earth up as 'they' do say that this increases the yield.

 

I use a similar method as Kristen as you can see here;

http://www.thegardenersalmanac.co.uk/Data/Potato/Planting potatoes/planting potatoes.html

 

OK this year I will try both methods on my earlies,

Must remember which is which, and I will continue from there
I suppose both methods require similar work input, as one requires earthing up the other requires weeding

Jack McH