Planting potatoes in fall and winter for early harvest next year

I found this article and the comments quite interesting.

backwoods home magazines article

Quote from the article:
"The heat is generated for several weeks or even months, depending upon the amount of mulch used, and causes the potato sets to begin their growth cycle so that the roots begin to grow. The second layer of mulch and the dirt on top of it prevents the heat from escaping rapidly, while the soil on top is too cold for the plants to emerge from the soil. Small potatoes start to form very early, and they will grow all winter."

Does that mean small tubers are forming all winter even without photosynthesis?

I planted potatoes in winter last year because store bought spuds were germinating before I got to eat them. They got buried in a pile of half composted leaves. We had the record low temperature in Feb then a march warmer than usual. The green tops were inches tall weeks before last frost day. Then we had heavy snow and that killed the tops left uncovered. Potatoes ( red and russet) started blooming in May and I started stealing some spuds on Memorial weekend. I harvested some huge potatoes in mid June before the squashes took over the area. Yield to seed ratio was about 6 in my case. Some spuds left in the ground started growing in Sept. They will probably die back then regrow next spring.

The whole cycle is totally reversed from the conventional way of growing potatoes. I prefer it actually as I don't have enough space dedicated to growing potatoes the whole summer. With rotation, I am able to grow three crops in the same spot: potato, winter squash, and daikon radish.

Are you growing potato this way? Please share your experience, such as variety, procedure, care and yield. Let's grow more food.

I'm sorry but that sounds a load of bull. anyone who has tried to get a compost heap to heat up knows you need an awful lot more stuff than 8 inches in a narrow band surrounded by cold soil, and if you did get it to heat up nicely it would also kill the potato. And lets say you did get the potato to grow roots, it will also try to grow tops, they will come up and get frosted again and again eventually dying.
Potatoes will overwinter where I am so long as they are fairly deep but you can dig them up in March and they are still perfect for eating they haven't grown a single root, By May they have started to grow roots, but they grow roots and shoots at the same time, not roots first and then shoots. Think of the potatoes you forgot in the cupboard, they grow the shoots and the roots at the same time, not one before the other.

If you want early potatoes, pick an early variety (not a maincrop) chit it about 8 weeks before your last frost, (place in a light and fairly warm place I use my living room window sills) Plant out about 4 weeks before last frost, they may come up and get nipped but they will recover. I plant potatoes in Early May and harvest 6-8 weeks later after that the ground can be used for something else, normally tomatoes.

I suspect all that has happened for them is the potatoes over wintered in their dormant state and then grew as the soil started to warm up just like normal, but this time they didn't get the late June frost to kill them.

Hi, Skandi, do you mean the potatoes left unharvested in ground eventually got killed in spring frosts? The author was from north Carolina so I guess weather is much milder there.

Growing potatoes in warm season indeed is the easiest, hassle free method. I grew those too in May to August in newly prepped garden bed. My main garden is only 7m by 6m, growing squashes, tomatoes and peppers. So unfortunately,  the growing seasons overlap with that of spring planted potatoes.

I tend to believe the winter potatoes go dormant then wake up early in spring. Is the underground winter growth just speculation or fact? Just like the potato tower thing, turned out more of a theory that doesn't work out.

May Lotito wrote: Just like the potato tower thing, turned out more of a theory that doesn't work out.

I think the problem is that people plant determinate potatoes rather than indeterminate. When I harvested this year, my French fingerlings were growing potatoes all along the stem, even above ground where it had flopped over on top of the mulch. My trusty yukons, which seem to be idiot and disaster proof, only grow in one clump at the base of the stem.

Unfortunately, most seed potato sellers don't tell you which varieties are determinate or indeterminate.

Like Skandi, I'm skeptical of the article. I always leave a few potatoes unharvested to come up in the spring. At first it was by accident, now I'm doing it on purpose to see which ones are prone to disease when grown this way. I don't have potatoes ready to harvest any earlier than the ones I plant in the spring. I plant well before last frost, like Skandi does. Sometimes the tops get killed by frost, but the potatoes underground are fine and regrow. I'm one of those people that likes to dig stuff up to see what's going on down there. I've never seen potatoes developing underground before leaves have developed up top.

May Lotito wrote:Hi, Skandi, do you mean the potatoes left unharvested in ground eventually got killed in spring frosts?
.....

....Is the underground winter growth just speculation or fact? Just like the potato tower thing, turned out more of a theory that doesn't work out.

The shallow ones are killed by winter frosts deeper ones survive if the voles don't get them. IF they started growing early which is what the article suggests they would be killed by the winter/spring frosts.
I think it's speculation as I do dig potatoes up all year and they have no new growth at all until the soil starts to warm in spring, an easy thing to test though, just try it and dig some up in January or February. Potato towers can work but you need the right potatoes, as Jan said you need to find indeterminate varieties. (which is why I don't hill my potatoes, I grow determinates and hilling will not increase crop one iota)

Trialing fall planting 3 beds of 3 different varieties using whole small potatoes under deep mulch in zone 3. Planted at the same time as hard neck garlic and Egyptian walking onions.

We noticed last year when we were growing garlic under deep mulch, that volunteer potatoes missed the year before came up. They popped out of the mulch about 3 to 4 weeks later than the spring planted ones (and avoided a late frost as a result). When we harvested the garlic, we found excellent potatoes so the late start didn't seem to impact them.

Skandi Rogers wrote:Potato towers can work but you need the right potatoes, as Jan said you need to find indeterminate varieties. (which is why I don't hill my potatoes, I grow determinates and hilling will not increase crop one iota)

I would like to find indeterminate potatoes... Skandi, can you tell us which varieties you grow, so I don't waste my time trialing the determinate ones?

Nick Kitchener wrote:Trialing fall planting 3 beds of 3 different varieties using whole small potatoes under deep mulch in zone 3.

I'm playing with a similar idea -- a perpetual potato patch that I can harvest or ignore. In late June I had leftover potatoes from last year, so I dug a few trenches in an out of the way spot with poor soil and threw them in. They got a little bit of earth on top, whatever mulch I had handy, and no TLC at all. Live or die, said I. Quite a few survived the drought. I have no idea if they formed viable tubers, but I guess I'll find out next spring.

Kg

Jan White wrote:

I think the problem is that people plant determinate potatoes rather than indeterminate. When I harvested this year, my French fingerlings were growing potatoes all along the stem, even above ground where it had flopped over on top of the mulch. My trusty yukons, which seem to be idiot and disaster proof, only grow in one clump at the base of the stem.

Unfortunately, most seed potato sellers don't tell you which varieties are determinate or indeterminate

Thanks for pointing out. I haven't tried growing potato tower myself, but I have seen many youtubers got excited about building one but never showed the follow-up. Few would admit the failure and claimed that it didn't work. I am sure lots of people would be interested in the topic. Are you going to start a thread and tell us more about it?

Interesting discussion about potatoes. Just a couple quick points: potato varieties are not really determinate or indeterminate like tomatoes, but they trend in one direction or the other.  For example, Russet Norkotah, the most common fresh market russet, is thought of as determinate, while a common processing variety called Alturas is considered indeterminate. The gradation from 'determinate' to 'indeterminate' in potato varieties is probably one reason it's not talked about much in seed sales.

An important issue not discussed in this thread is inherent tuber dormancy. This varies dramatically across potato varieties. Some have genetically programmed dormancy of up to 200 days, others are dormant for only a couple weeks post-harvest. So, this idea of planting potatoes in the fall for spring harvest is most likely to succeed with long-dormancy varieties (in addition to places with moderate winters or good snow cover during extreme cold).

It seems potatoes are into location, location, location.  Aside from things freezing, especially in a tower that's above ground, day length is a big part of the equation.  So if the greens come up they are responding to day length as well.

Ever notice how many sprout from the compost pile?   That might be your first place to start, assuming your compost pile doesn't freeze.   If I get volunteer potatoes in the pile, I only add brown carbons after that, cover it for protection,  and see what happens.  Sometimes I only get little seed potatoes that then get planted in the regular way.

Here's a distinction that an online seed company makes about the determinate/indeterminate thing:

"Despite what many online sources declare, the distinction between determinate (bush) and indeterminate (vine) potatoes are not clearly defined and distract from the essentials of potato growing. "

"All potatoes grow well in the Potato Grow Bags."

"Even the Canadian government classifies potato varieties by their relative days to maturity:
https://inspection.canada.ca/plant-varieties/potatoes/characteristics/eng/1326490397702/1326490477981:

Thanks Cristo! Now I know that I have a grocery store sourced potato that is indeterminate! Horay! The stem is three feet long.

This potato plant is in a tub, slightly sheltered beside a tree. It has surived several frosts. I am experementing with late summer planting in hopes of a fall harvest. How frost sensitive do potatoes tend to be?

Nick Kitchener wrote:https://laidbackgardener.blog/2020/04/05/determinate-and-indeterminate-potatoes/

It is always interesting to see someone go to the effort of writing a very authoritative looking blog post that is pretty much total fantasy.  The author could not have actually tried growing determinate and indeterminate potatoes to arrive at these conclusions.  There are virtually no important distinctions between determinate and indeterminate potatoes to the casual potato grower other than that determinate potatoes are early to mid season and indeterminate potatoes are late.

As for the original topic, there are a lot of reasons why growing potatoes through harsh conditions is not ideal.  An early start is one thing, but when you make tubers that have ended their dormancy wait for months before they can put on normal growth, all kinds of wacky things can happen.  What you are doing in terms of potato biology is manipulating the physiological age of the tubers, which is essentially the biochemical clock that determines how a potato plant grows from a tuber.  Potatoes that are stored well, free of disease, and not held too long before planting have low physiogical age and they retain apical dominance (they form fewer stems) and grow longer before initiating tuberization.  This gives you a later but larger yield of tubers.  Potatoes that are stored under poor conditions, have heavy viral loads, or have to wait a long time before being given the proper conditions to grow lose their apical dominance, form lots of stems (assuming a large seed piece with many eyes), and race to tuberization, forming more but smaller tubers and lower total yields.  You can game this system to some degree as you have done in this case to get plants to race out of the gate in the spring and give you an early crop, but you could largely achieve the same thing by chitting tubers so that they are ready to plant a month before your last frost.  This avoids all the potential problems of growing in cold soil, including things like bacterial and fungal infections resulting from the cold sweetening of the tuber or little potato syndrome, where th plant goes into full emergency mode and just uses the energy in the tuber to form a bunch of little tubers and never makes a plant.

Until 1978 as my Granddad died he had no running water using a well, canned his own veggies and had only a small cellar under his house.
Bigger harvests like Beets for his Rabbits, Carrots, Cabbages and even frost tender Potatoes he stored outside under his pine trees.

I remember that these Potatoes grew early and sometimes in an early warm March these Potatoes sticking their greens out of these "Hills".  
But unfortunately as soon the next night frost came they were dead.
But somehow we found here and there some new Potatoes in the old storage Piles (in German called "Kartoffelmiete") never enough for a full meal.

They were efficient for storing as every German household had them until the Supermarkets came and Potatoes were available in abundance throughout the year.

I have the strange feeling that the seed potatoes are more expensive than the harvest you get but I add a drawing how these underground stores were built up.  
May be a modification will bring you to an idea of success...

Does anyone have a good book on potato to recommend? I'd like to know more about the history,  genetics, variety, growing etc.

We bought some russet and yukon gold potatoes last winter. The russet already sprouted with shoots 1" long so I planted some in ground with deep mulch. Our coldest days are over but last frost day still two months away. Eyes are starting to develop in the Yukon gold too but they should be able to wait till normal planting time.

The University of Idaho has a comprehensive book: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-39157-7  It is aimed at large-scale producers, but information in there would still apply in various ways to gardeners. The book at the link is the revised version. The previous version would be fine for garden-level info and might be found used somewhere. The university might still have old copies based on this web page: https://www.extension.uidaho.edu/detail.aspx?IDnum=1636

I planted yukon gold seed potatoes 4 weeks before last frost and got a harvest to seed ratio of 7 (14 lbs from 2 lbs seeds). I am going to plant within the 6-8 weeks window next time to get a better yield, it's claimed to be able to produce 10 to 15 times of seed weight.

The winter planted potatoes produced less at average 5:1 ratio and I lost some tubers to wireworms. The advantage of having early potato and garlic is that after harvesting them in early June, I am able to grow warm season crops right after that. But otherwise, planting potatoes in early spring gives better yield and quality.

So I tried again last year. On 12/03/23, 90 tubers were planted 3 inches deep and the whole area was mulched with 3-4 of plant residues and oak leaves. Lowest temperature was -2F in January and before the cold air arrived, I put several layers of cardboard sheets on top for extra insulation. They were later removed in March when potato shoots emerged.

We went through three times of hard freeze and frost events in the past month and I need to cover the new growth up overnight each time. Emergence rate is about 70% with some lost to chickens and cats digging in the garden before the fence was installed. I also bought seed potatoes and planted them 4 weeks ago. So far the winter potatoes are ahead of the spring planted potatoes even with some setback from coldness.

Some potatoes started to flower in early May and I pinched the blossoms. Some plants are weak and small, attacked heavily by slugs. A few are already dying and they turn out to be Yukon gold or Russet. Strong and healthy plants are all red potatoes.

I start harvesting new potatoes for meals but also set aside spuds around 1.5 Oz for fall planting.

Some small potato plants began to die back after Memorial weekend so I started to dig up potatoes for dinner table. The rest are turning yellow too, I will let them grow for two more weeks.