Planting and harvesting potatoes

In years passed by, potato farming in South Africa was carried out largely by smaller farmers, with just a few giant producers. Today, it’s finished primarily by giant operators.

This is as a result of elevated value of labour, which has inspired farmers to mechanise manufacturing, from planting to harvesting, and washing to packing. But to have the ability to afford this equipment, potato farmers should plant giant areas.

Small-scale potato farmers are discovered largely in outlying areas, the place mechanisation is confined to easy implements for eradicating the potatoes from the soil. Family members perform the handbook work.

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This is a really costly crop to develop attributable to its excessive fertiliser requirement and the price of seed potatoes. It’s dangerous to make use of potatoes from the marketplace for planting; potential issues embrace introducing illnesses to the soil and having viruses within the tubers that may in the end end in a decrease yield. To purchase correctly produced seed potatoes is like shopping for insurance coverage.

Free of illness
Professionally produced seed potatoes begin in a laboratory the place vegetation are produced in vitro and tubers are grown underneath completely hygienic circumstances for just a few generations earlier than turning into accessible as disease-free seed potatoes.

These are produced in cool areas, normally on remoted farms, and visited by inspectors who test that the crop is disease-free.

If you’ve produced a very wholesome crop for the market, you need to use the small tubers for planting with minimal threat. But it is best to do that solely when there are not any indicators of virus within the crop and no aphids have been seen throughout manufacturing. Keep in thoughts {that a} wholesome crop can develop into contaminated by aphids migrating from a neighbour whose vegetation have a virus, and the harm will solely be seen within the following crop.

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Potatoes do finest in cool circumstances. On the Highveld, the tubers are planted in late July/August, the timing relying on how superior the sprouting improvement is. You don’t need them to be properly emerged when there may be hazard of frost. If the shoots are simply poking although the soil floor when frost hits, the harm won’t be too extreme. If you’re uncertain, moderately err on the facet of warning.

If, nevertheless, you expertise a late frost when the vegetation are about 20cm tall, the harm will likely be appreciable. There’s not that a lot distinction in harvest time between planting very early or when it’s secure to take action.

On the Highveld, you possibly can plant up till January. In subtropical areas, April is an effective time to plant. Years in the past, having no expertise of potatoes in any respect, I planted in early summer season in
a subtropical space and was amazed at how wholesome the crop seemed. When it got here time to reap, nevertheless, there have been virtually no tubers. I discovered a tough lesson!

There are usually fewer dangers when planting in spring than in January. Conditions for blight are safer with early planting, and there’s additionally much less probability of tuber moth harm.

When planting early, embrace an early selection as properly, as the costs available on the market are normally increased earlier than Christmas.

Bill Kerr is a vegetable specialist and a breeder of a spread of greens. 

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