The TOP 5 Potato Growing Misconceptions Dispelled

what is going on everyone welcome to another very exciting episode right here on the my gardener channel in today's episode we're gonna be digging into potato misconceptions we're gonna be talking about all the misconceptions that i've heard from the past couple years of doing these videos and what i'm gonna do is i'm gonna break them down and really explain why they don't work and some alternatives that will work so that not only are we kind of busting these myths and these misconceptions and getting you guys the actual factual information but i'm also going to be helping you guys to actually have success when growing potatoes now we do have a complete growing guide on how to grow potatoes if you don't know anything about how to grow potatoes i'd recommend checking out that video first because that's going to help you out way more than this video will once you have the foundational building blocks then come back to this video and it'll probably help you out a lot so in this video like i said all we're going to do is basically going to be breaking down those potato growing misconceptions and it was brought about from a few people that have sent in emails over the past couple days and i said you know i know i've done videos about this in the past but i've never really done a kind of an all-encompassing umbrella video about how you know uh you know not only uh how to properly grow potatoes but kind of busting those myths and misconceptions around growing potatoes so that's what we're gonna do in today's video if i achieve this goal of helping you guys grow bigger go home if i achieve the goal of helping you guys grow potatoes better and busting myths and i teach you something throughout this video make sure to promise me that you're going to throw a thumbs up subscribe if you're not yet already and share this video with a friend so let's get going so the first most common potato growing misconception is the idea of the potato tower now i think a lot of you you probably have maybe even tried this have at least heard of a potato tower and the potato tower is essentially just a box that you build you plant a potato in the bottom and you continuously hill the potato and as you go you basically put up boards along this box and as the potato grows you also fill in more you hill it higher and essentially all along the stem the potato will produce more roots and those roots will produce more potatoes and then by the end of the season one plant can produce up to 75 pounds of potatoes i think you've all have seen this or heard of this and it's something that's very attractive for new gardeners and it really kind of lures in uh you know young gardeners that want to grow a ton of food in a small amount of space and i understand i definitely sympathize with you if you don't have that much space and you really want to maximize it and optimize uh you know to grow the most amount of food that's a great goal to have the problem is this video was very misleading this video was done i think back in 2016 2015 and it went absolutely viral and since then the entire gardening industry has really gotten around the idea that if if you just keep healing potatoes they'll just keep producing more potatoes and biologically i hate to say it that is just not true you could take any of these potatoes right here you could heal them up three four five feet and you will not get any more potatoes than what you have done at the very bottom and the reason why is because that video was done based around a magic trick we've done a whole video debunking this a long time ago and yes it was probably the poorest quality video i've ever done i was i did it in my apartment back now five six years ago but the premise was based around how this video was actually produced the person did not have one potato they completely flat out lied there's not one potato there was multiple potatoes because that's the only way biologically it can be done there was a potato that's put at the bottom of the barrel then it was hilled as it grew they actually held it and then planted another potato on top then as it grew they put they held it they planted another potato on top of that they obviously had a very long growing season and they let these potatoes grow basically their their entire life and they kept doing that until the top of the barrel was full they let all the plants then die and then they harvested it as if it was one plant and it's just not true because potatoes will not produce roots past about two inches up the stem these roots are called support roots any plant has the capability of producing support roots what that the purpose of support roots is is to support the plant during high winds it's kind of an anchor potatoes can do it tomatoes will do it peppers will do it sunflowers will do it corn will do it basically any plant can produce these support roots and it just is like i said it's an anchor so that uh the the plant is a little more sturdy during high winds and um so these these potato plants will produce support roots and the support roots will produce uh potatoes but the potato plant will not produce roots any higher up no matter how high you hill it the actual purpose of hilling potatoes is to protect the potatoes from sunlight potatoes are a member of the solensei family and so uh potatoes need to be kept out of sunlight in order to stop from turning green that's the only objective of hilling potatoes it's not to get more of them it's not too uh you know you're not the goal is not to get more potatoes it's simply to protect the ones that the plant will produce a lot of people toss around the misconception that potatoes because they're in a soul and nsa family that they are also like tomatoes and if tomatoes can be determinate and indeterminate so can potatoes but i would ask this question if peppers are in the solanence family and eggplants are in the soul and nsa family how come they are not determinate or indeterminate peppers and eggplants are just peppers and eggplants they don't have uh subtypes they're not there's not an indeterminate pepper and a determinate pepper there's not an indeterminate eggplant any determinant eggplant so the story really falls apart and the only reason why that part is even brought into this whole video is because people like to conflate that potatoes are a soul and nsa family crop and therefore they can have an indeterminate potato and a determinate potato this is just not true what you can have is an early season mid-season and late season potato but that does not correlate to more tuber development that simply correlates to when the tubers are ready to be harvested it correlates to the flowering cycle that happens whether the flowers occur earlier in the season or later in the season after the flowers drop off is when tuber development begins so the later they flower the later they're going to produce tubers that's the only thing that it correlates to it does not mean that a potato is going to keep producing potatoes as long as the plant is alive and you know as long as you keep healing the potatoes going to keep producing potatoes it's just not true third misconception around growing potatoes is that the more nitrogen you give them the more tuber development you're going to get this also is not true tuber development is only dictated by one one and i mean one nutrient it was found by the the agricultural extension of i believe cornell and don't quote me on that but i remember reading a white paper and what they were basically saying in that white paper was that the only ingredient or the only nutrient that was found to actually increase production was not nitrogen not phosphorus not calcium it was potassium what they found is that by increasing the potassium by twofold they were actually able to increase tuber production or potato production to fold as well and so there was a threshold that then they 3xed the potassium levels and they found that after about doubling the amount of potassium in the soil tuber production kind of hit a a threshold it really could not continue to scale at that rate so if you forexed the amount of potassium you're not going to get 4x the potatoes but if you did at least 2x the amount of potassium found in the soil you would at least get 2x the amount of potatoes this was absolutely incredible and truly i mean really really helped me out because a lot of people throw around the idea that you know the more foliage you have the more energy the potatoes gonna have which means the more uh tuber production the potatoes can have not true the amount of phosphorous you add people will say oh if you have more phosphorous potatoes are a root crop it's going to help them generate more roots not true root development is not fruit development tuber development only has to do with potassium so flat out not true now yes it is true you should give them a well-balanced fertilizer yes it is true that potatoes are a heavy feeder they use lots of nitrogen they certainly are going to benefit from some from some phosphorus that's why we feed our plants with lots of trifecta lots of compost worm castings all the good stuff that they need to survive and thrive but we really want to focus on that potassium because potassium is kind of that regulator of how many potatoes the plant can produce a fourth potato growing misconception is that you can't grow potatoes from store-bought potatoes now this isn't 100 true and it's not 100 false either it's kind of 50 50 and that's because there's a little gray area yes you can go to the grocery store and plant potatoes but you can't plant all types of potatoes where i'm getting at is that you can't plant conventionally grown potatoes if i just go to the grocery store and buy potatoes plant them in the garden i'm gonna have really bad results and that's because conventionally grown potatoes are sprayed with a sprout inhibitor that sprout inhibitor prevents the eyes from growing and those eyes reduce the shelf life and so grocery stores love conventionally grown potatoes because they can sit on the shelf for two three months with no ill effects whatsoever but you take an organically grown potato from the grocery store throw it in the garden you're going to be fine and that's because those organic potatoes have not been sprayed with a sprout inhibitor so yes you can go to the grocery store you can buy organically grown potatoes and you can throw them in the ground and you'll have success will you have the best success no and that's because seed potatoes are selected for you know prime genetics they're selected for the strongest uh the strongest genetics the the best yields um and so they've really kind of cold out the healthiest and best potatoes to use for seed so you're not going to necess you're not going to necessarily get the best quality seed potatoes from the grocery store if they're organic but you can still plant them and get a yield i try to make that very clear that you know it's a common misconception that people just say if you buy it from the store you can't plant it so just make that very clear that if they're organic you're good to go if they're conventional and they're non-organic just best to either eat them or throw them in the compost pile alright in the fifth and final potato growing misconception is that you can only grow potatoes once a year this is just not true at all potatoes only take about 65 to 75 days to fully mature and so once the flowers drop off tuber production begins and you can pull up your potatoes even when they're very small and use them for small little you know boiling potatoes or baby potatoes and those baby potatoes are very delicious and people sometimes prefer just to only eat those and so you can grow your potatoes until they're just at their maturity point pull them up and then plant them again and a lot of people if you have more than 140 days in your growing season you can grow two successions of potatoes in a single growing season so don't just think of potatoes as an early season crop that you have to get in the ground as early as possible grow it all season let the plant grow up let it die and then harvest just the biggest potatoes yes you are going to get larger potatoes and you might get a few more potatoes from letting the plant fully grow and then and then fully die but you're also sacrificing a good part of your the rest of your growing season to possibly growing more potatoes so if you really value those small young ones try doing that it's a great way to grow some a good amount of potatoes and really high quality potatoes at that but potatoes are by no means a one you know a one uh one planting crop you could say so you can definitely plant more than one and if you're in a growing season where you don't get a frost or a freeze you can plant three or four successions of potatoes so definitely give that a shot don't just plant them in early season plant them all season as soon as you pull up the plants get another one in the ground as long as you have 65 to 75 days to allow that plant to mature you can actually get potatoes so i highly recommend it i really hope that you try it and these are those are the five common potato growing misconceptions at least the five most common that i hear i hope you guys enjoyed i really hope that you learned something new and i hope that this information helps you guys to grow more potatoes grow them easier and really just distinguish between fact and fiction with growing potatoes there's a lot of hearsay out there there's a lot of you know just i don't want to say lies but there's a lot of misconceptions out there and a lot of people they just uh they don't even really know that they're spreading around misconceptions so i hope you guys enjoyed i hope you learned something new and as always this is luke from the mi gardener channel reminding you to grow big or go home and we'll catch you all later see ya bye

Channel: MIgardener

Views: 26,836

Rating: 4.9544787 out of 5

Keywords: MIgardener, Premiere_Elements_2018, facts, garden tip, how to grow potatoes, myths, organic, potato, tutorial

Id: HaObKXs6yI0

Length: 13min 12sec (792 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 17 2021