help. . . potato trouble?

[Doc]

A friend just contacted me that he is having trouble with his potatoes. He is trying the potato bin thing. Says he is using the same soil in each bin. The potatoes are nearly ready for hilling/covering but one of the two bins the potato plants are turning yellow and not doing very well.

I'm no potato expert so I have no thoughts on what it might be nor what to suggest. Anyone that can do either would be of big help!
Thanks!

[lovetogarden]

It may be a nitrogen deficiency. See picture.
http://www.hbci.com/~wenonah/min-def/potato.htm


Since I garden organically, my suggestion would be to use a fish emulsion fertilizer. Fish is high in nitrogen. A combination fish/seaweed would be good too as potatoes uptake a lot of potassium.

[lovetogarden]

Doc,
The obvious just hit me. I grow several types of potatoes. Perhaps the leaves are turning yellow because the plant is an early maturing variety. Is your
friend growing different variety of potatoes in these bins?

My Irish Cobbler is done flowering and telling me its time to start digging. My other varieties or mid and late season,they are still green and growing.

[Mary]

My potatoes are through flowering and on one plant where the flower was is a small marble size ball ,does anyone know what this is and what I do with it?

[Lavandula Girl]

Some potatoes grow little tomato looking fruits - their inedible, but nothing to worry about. Your potato is doing exactly what it's supposed to - setting fruit for seed! The potatoes underground are tubers - root parts, so seed potatoes are actually root cuttings. Some seed places, like Nichols, are now selling potato seeds, instead of seed potatoes. Not sure how well they grow, since I've never tried it. My first thought ould be a difficulty in getting the potatoes to come true, but since I have no experience at it, that would be pure conjecture.

[Mary]

I've found more potato seeds, two fell off so I put them in my cold frame for now, I didn't bury them,what do I do with them?Do they dry up and the seeds pop out?And then what?

[zebraman]

Hey Mary;You ferment the seeds inside just like Tomato seeds.-

[Jo Dean]

HELP!! I have beautiful potatoes, i dig them and in three or four days they begin to turn off color and then they rot!! Any solutitons out there???

[tughillcam]

HELP!! I have beautiful potatoes, i dig them and in three or four days they begin to turn off color and then they rot!! Any solutitons out there???

I'm afraid your potatoes been bitten by tuber rot- look it up on Google images. Were they planted in the same spot for years in a row ? That's what mine did when I didn't move the potato bed around to different areas. It's a horrible, horrible thing. Once that happened to me, I made sure to grow at least 2 types of spuds so if one went down like that, I could at least eat the other type.

I don't know if this will help or not, but I have been given a suggestion to dip all the potatoes in hydrogen peroxide before storing. I haven't tried it yet so I don't know if it will work.

[bhpigeon2]

If it were real heavy soil, and you've had a lot of rain since the potatoes were done growing, that could also account for the rotting. What happens is that the skin does not properly develop or breaks down in the wet conditions. Without the thick skin, no defense against the bad guys. Hate that when it happens!

bhp2