Any of you folks plant potatoes under a bed of straw ? If so what are your most productive methods ? How far apart and how deep do you plant them in the soil to start with . And yes , I know it’s too late to start potatoes.

I plant potatoes all the way to the end of June. So, not too late.

Straw is nice as it produces very clean potatoes. I would work up the ground and add any fertilizer you wish to use. Potatoes are pretty heavy users of N but you get better quality if you just give moderate levels. My dad used to always cut potatoes and dust them with rock phosphate and plant them.

Place them on top of your worked up soil and place 5-6" of straw on top. You can keep adding straw as the plant developes. Spacing can be 8-14" apart. The closer you plant them you can purposely get smaller average size potatoes by crowding. (If that is desirable).

If you want bigger potatoes, cut seed pieces to one or two eyes and give them more space.

Thanks BP , I remember helping my Dad harvest potatoes one year that he used straw , about 1978 . It seemed like a phenomenal crop and easy to pick up after raking the straw off the patch. I just wasn’t there when He planted them .

X2
I planted some in straw bales before with great success but found you need to water twice as often as the air dries things out quite rapidly. But in the end all I had to do was cut the strings and pick out my clean potatoes. Since then have gone back to beaverpeeler's method.

Beaverpeeler x2

Beaver peeler knows potatoes.

keep away from using manure since the spuds will have scabs.

^^^Not an issue with the straw system. The roots will go into the manure but all the spuds are formed above in the straw that is absent of manure.

Good to know cause the scabs turns off the eating of the skins-sometimes the best part of baked potatoes.

I've used the straw method and the stacked tire method.
I'm wondering
Can you use the straw method with sweep potatoes?
just

No, or a least I wouldn't try it. Sweet taters are true roots unlike spuds.

I have never done the straw method. I have read about it but have not. Last year I put 3 year old composte in the bottom of my trenches then put down the seed and planted. Best spuds I have ever had, so this year I covered the whole garden with 3-4 inches of composte we had and worked it in twice with my tractor mounted roto tiller, dug the trenches and planted. Now we wait to see what the outcome will be.

Bryce

Never done the straw.Do the mice or grubs become a problem in the straw?

They wern't a problem for me
just.

I assume by straw you mean clean wheat or oat straw?

Hay would be a nightmare of grass seed.

Yes straw.
just

I might try wood chipper chips.

If I buy seed the beetles are thick. The compost / volunteers are clean.
I have wet ground though.

I would think the chips would be a constant problem , at least in my area the wind would blow them away . If you put them on too thick they would begin composting and get too hot .

Nothing ventured,,,

I don't commit a lot of space or time to spuds and will try some.
If this place ever dries out.
Forsythia sprouts fine in them, like weeds lol.