Peruvian potatoes

[redback]

On another thread I discovered that Sir Walter Raleigh introduced Peruvian potatoes into Ireland in 1589. The Late Potato Blight started destroying the crops in 1845. For 256 years these crops were grown using last season's tubers as seed. They were grown the Peruvian way with mounded rows, seaweed as fertilizer and oats as the crop in rotation. The oats were fed to their animals. The people ate potatoes as their main meals every day and the nutrition was so good that the population rapidly multiplied.
In Australia today you are not supposed to use last year's tubers as seed due to the risk of disease.
So how come the Irish could use their tubers as seed for 256 years? In Peru the potato is native. It grows wild so could it have picked up remarkable immunity to disease and extremely high nutrition just by being close to nature. In one of his You Tube videos Zuch Bush retells the story African bushmen who return to their village with the bodies of their zebra prey on their backs. He says that the millions of microbes on the zebra skin transfer to the human skin. As a result, the human microbiome of the bushmen is thirty times greater than that of urbanites in America.
These incidents suggest that growing your food crops as close to nature as possible is the way to go.

 

[Meadowlark]

Very interesting @redback.

I've been saving seed potatoes for as long as I can remember. No offence intended @redback, but it seems stupid to me to have such a rule as Australia does without regard to the practices of the individual farmer.

My seed potatoes are 100% disease free, never exposed to pesticides or fungicides or whatever just organic nutrients. IMO, they are far superior to commercial seed potatoes from the boxstore.

Not even close. I think it was @Oliver Buckle who said potatoes have likely been sprayed 8 times w/pesticides and etc. before taken to market.

I can't imagine eating the skins (jackets as we call them) on those poisoned potatoes as we routinely do on our home-grown ones. Very nutritious.

I grow potatoes much like the Peruvian way as you described in raised rows (mounded) w/companion planted sugar snap peas.

After potato harvest, all plant debris is removed and burned and then that row is planted in cover crops usually a legume mix a couple of times and used for something like corn the following year. I allow three years of rotations for my potatoes. Probably more than needed but I prefer it that way.

...These incidents suggest that growing your food crops as close to nature as possible is the way to go.

I could not agree more, my friend.

 

[redback]

I've been saving seed potatoes for as long as I can remember. No offence intended @redback, but it seems stupid to me to have such a rule as Australia does without regard to the practices of the individual farmer.

Okay. I have planted tubers and lots have grown after being left in the ground. The skin becomes blotchy on the first year after certified seed.
I'm surprised you don't have the same laws as us but I will investigate further. I have some purple potatoes that can be replanted without deterioration.

 

[Meadowlark]

... The skin becomes blotchy on the first year after certified seed.

But it doesn't matter because we don't eat the seed potatoes...only the new potatoes.

 

[redback]

The blotches are on the new tubers where the mother seed potato is last year's harvest.
Can you tell me the variety you are using?

 

[Meadowlark]

I've tested about 16 different varieties and settled on 1) Yukon gold as my primary yellow/white potato, 2) Red Pontiac as primary red potato and 3) Sarpo Mira (European heritage) for just pure taste delight.

By far, the Red Pontiac is the most productive of these yielding up to about 15 pounds of new potatoes for every pound of seed potato. One 80 ft raised row (which is what I normally plant) with 1/2 red and 1/2 other will generally produce several hundred pounds of new potatoes for eating, storing, and seed for the next crop which is normally in the following fall.

My spring crop has been planted for a couple of weeks now and today, I planted 300 companion sugar snap peas for nitrogen down the road and for "creamed peas and new potatoes" after harvest... fabulous eating.

 

[redback]

My spring crop has been planted for a couple of weeks now and today, I planted 300 companion sugar snap peas for nitrogen down the road and for "creamed peas and new potatoes" after harvest... fabulous eating.

You're an inspiration. I checked out a couple of the other topics including 'Continuous Supply...'
@kiwi calls the blotched skin 'scab'.
I can plant potatoes all year, and I can get red Pontiacs. So, I'll start building the soil and wait for rain.

 

[Meadowlark]

@kiwi calls the blotched skin 'scab'.
.

Scab is actually a disease caused by the bacterium Streptomyces scabies which results in rough, corky patches or lesions on the potato skin, making the potatoes look ugly but usually does not affect the eating quality of the potato.

Remember I said above I use a 3-year rotation on potatoes...scab is the primary reason for that rotation. I never have scab with that rotation and good sanitary soil practices. Never.

p.s. I can't prove it, but I have also seen long ago when I was using synthetic fertilizers a strong correlation between scab and synthetic nitrogen.... but don't tell that to the chemical zealots or face ridicule

 

[redback]

I always had about a six-year rotation but that was just the number of beds I had. The place I owned before this one had sandy loam soil and grew good spuds easily. My current property is warmer but has clay soil that is harder to work.

My new 'natural' garden can't have big monocultures so will probably have six to ten smaller patches of nine tubers each and they will be interplanted with peas and various flowers and herbs. Corn too will be small patches of twelve corn. If you put a seed in each corner and plant the corn a foot (30cm) apart in both directions the bed is only 2 foot by 3 foot big (60x90cm).

 

[Meadowlark]

Some people call that sq. ft gardening...a big deal in some quarters.

It will be interesting how they produce in your clay soil...and warmer too doesn't help.