Hey y'all, this coming year will be the third year I will have grown pumpkins and the 2nd year I've grown onions and potatoes to sell. I work at an orchard during the summer and my boss (owner of the orchard) buys anything I grow and want to sell in addition to all the vegetables and fruit we grow there. Last year I planted 1 45 foot row of potatoes and 1 15-20 foot row of onions. The ratio of work I put into them to money I made was awesome,(little work, and selling only half the crop I paid for expenses plus got money in my pocket)  and I'd like to expand that part of my mini business significantly this year. But I honestly don't know a lot about growing potatoes or onions.

Do y'all have any suggestions on a certain variety of potatoes to grow that do better, produce more per plant and get bigger than others? What I grew last year was just a mix of red and white I got at the local hardware store. I know they don't like nitrogen, but is there any fertilizer they do like I should add to the soil? How often and much do they like to be watered? I presume mulching is ok? I know to pull dirt up around them as they grow.

The onions I grew were just a box of purple and white a friend gave me after she used all she wanted. They came from the dollar store. Again, any tips on a variety that does better and get bigger? Onions like a lot of water right? How about mulch? What kind of fertilizer for them? I have a friend I can get cow crap from and I dump at least one truck load on the gardens every year, is this ok for onions and potatoes?

As y'all can tell I really don't know much about growing onions and potatoes, I guess this past year was just pure luck. Any tips to help are greatly appreciated. Also know of any websites or books that'd be helpful please give me the name.  Thanks for any help, the collective amount of information on arfcom is just incredible and everyone seems to be very pleasant and helpful. I really appreciate it.

Tag, because I suck at growing potatoes.

Sweet potatoes are a different story - I've had exceptionally good luck with them.

Hmm.

What is fortunate is that both are easy to grow, and grow well with similar needs.

I have had excellent luck with both onions and potatoes with my normal composted manure treatment. I'm not crazy about testing my soil, sorry.

I've had excellent luck with Norland Reds, Yukon Golds, and Kennebec White potatoes. Interestingly, each year one doesn't do well while the others thrive. 

Yes, either mound up dirt or mulch around your potatoes. Mulch is better, dirt is good. Get yourself a potato digger if you are doing more than a 20' row of potatoes (assuming you have at least a garden tractor). You will thank me later.

Onions: I grow them in what I call 1x2 rows. I plant two rows about 1 foot apart (onions about 8 inches apart in the rows) and then each double row is spaced by a 2 foot gap to the next double row, which gives me enough room to walk along and use my long handled stirrup weeder to get 95% of the weeds. It looks something like this:

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Onions and potatoes DO NOT TOLERATE WEEDS. So weeding is paramount. For variety, I like Yellow of Parma, as it has good flavor, keeps well, and grows well here.

Both onions and potatoes need to be regularly watered. Don't let them go dry, don't have them soaking wet all the time either.

Its also bad juju to let critters and kids trample on the onions and knock the tops over. Onions don't like that....

One issue with onions from bulb sets is some WILL jump to seed. Just pull them and eat them. Nothing you can do to stop it, and the onion will start to rot quickly. You can fix this by starting from seed, but that is only a good idea if you need 

My parents grow a lot of Kennebec potatoes, have all my life. Currently they grow two rows about 100 yards long, and we have friends who grow potatoes in the same garden alongside ours. This year we had six rows total, all 100 yards long.

If you time things right, you can avoid a lot of weeding. You already know to hoe the dirt up around them. We run a cultivator or a lot of times a rototiller (shallow) to take care of the weeds between the rows. Then you have nice loose dirt to hoe up around the plants. If you do it when the potato plants have come up but the weeds close to the plants aren't high, you can cover up the weeds with the dirt. This allows the potato plants to get way ahead of the weeds. Not going to stop you from having to weed entirely, but it sure helps a lot.

My dad will spray for Colorado potato beetles. We do water if it's a really dry summer. As said, you don't want them over-watered either. A real wet summer where the ground is also wet produces scabs and rotten potatoes. Too dry and they'll be nice clean looking potatoes, but they'll be small and yields are lower.

Here's some pics from a few years back:







Here's another year:









Both of those were good years. The piles pictured were probably a row or a row and a half.

Here's a few pics from this year. This year started out very wet, then the second half of the summer was very dry. The potatoes weren't quite as plentiful as some years, but what was there was very nice and clean.

For onions look at dixondale farms videos on YouTube.

Where are you located? A lot of it depends on that.

Here's us in central PA. My wife's family farms potatoes, and these pics are from the first time I was ever there, a year before we started dating. I believe 2008.

I second the comment related to Dixondale Farms for onion sets, I purchase my sets from them each year and they are really good quality.  Their site has some good info as to planting, growing and harvesting.  Onion variety will depend on your location, i.e. short day/intermediate or long day.  I planted 600 white sweet onions and 200 red sweet onions back the middle of December but you'll be later.  They run out of sets each year so you want to order ASAP.  One major thing is to not plant them too deep.

I also plant new potatoes typically Red Pontiac down here, I've also planted the white Kennebec mentioned, seem to do a bit better with the red and that is what most people are accustomed to buying as a new potato in my area.  I planted 30# of seed potatoes last year, yield was about 350#.  My local farm supply center suggested using Sulphur dust on the cut potato seed to help prevent rot, I planted some in a relatively wet section of the garden and they did better than prior years without the dust so I'll use it again.  Also we typically cut the seed potatoes a week or two before planting to let the cut area dry, also seems to keep from rotting somewhat.

As far as potatoes I really break the soil up as deep as I can before planting and keep hilling it up as they grow.  I use a potato plow to make the row which leaves a 6"- 8" trench, then apply fertilizer as I am using hiller disc to cover and make the hill.  Then I make a second shallow pass with the potato plow to make the furrow and place the seed potatoes.  Then use the hiller disc to cover.  I usually make a couple more passes with the hiller disk to keep building the bed up higher until I can't plow them anymore.

Then use the potato plow to dig them up.

Thanks for the replies and advive yall, dixondale farms has tons of awesome info, Ill be placing some orders soon!

To all of the folks that have a larger plot of land than I do and can work with, I have enjoyed seeing your pictures and can only wish that one day , I can have something bigger in my yard. I do onions ( Chives for seasoning ) in my windowsill year round for bacon and tater cheese skins and other things, and have a small plot of soil  outside to grow Kennebecs  when interested.


OP,

Potatoes are easy to grow as are onions.



PA452,

Have you ever grown Yukon Gold potatoes?

I want to try those this year. I like the flavor of them over the Kennebecs.

I will also say that I would like several dumpster trucks of your soil delivered up here too as your soil is something that strikes a fancy to me!

You must be farther South from me. The only folks that I have seen with that kind of soil color , get soil conditions like you have.

I guess that I need to move.

RabidDog, Holy smokes!! That amount of taters is crazy, and the size of the one in your hand is ridiculous! I doubt I'll be up to that scale any time soon. Thanks for the pictures.

Kitties-With-Sigs, I'll probably start a "Coontrapper's 2017 garden" thread. I'm hoping for some epic results, I got my license this past year so I can give my different spread out garden plots a lot more attention and hopefully expand. Not really feeling gardening yet, I'm getting ready to place some seed orders but that's about it. I'm still in the hunting/trapping/wander the woods phase.

Don't think so, it's my parents that grow all those potatoes; as far as I know they've always grown Kennebec. I would like to carry on the tradition on the property though. I've been part of the process my whole life except for my time away in the Army. Potato harvesting time is its own special season for them.

And actually we're farther to the north, in Pennsylvania. That ground had a lot of horse manure worked into it years ago, though I bet it's been close to 20 years or more since then. Our neighbors had horses when I was younger; my dad had a loader, another neighbor had a dump truck, and the horse owner had more manure than she knew what to do with. It was a convenient arrangement for all three parties involved. Unfortunately those days are long past.

The best soil in that garden is at the bottom of the hill now. That garden is on a light slope. Over the years with heavy rains, tilled dirt works its way down hill. The top soil is much deeper at the bottom now than it is at the top.

The best way to grow onions is to grow them from plants grown from seed. Easy way to do that is in the fall, clear a spot in your garden toward the end of november and plant the seed a half inch deep and fertilize the spot. The will come up and be in good shape to transplant by the time you will need them. Same thing works for a lot of stuff, spring cabbage especially.

You need a well manured ground to grow good onions. There is no such thing as too much rotted manure for them. You want to remove the dirt from the bulbs, and let the tap root do its thing. Doesn't hurt to mulch them with clean hay of yard clippings on top of news paper or whatever.

As for potatoes you need to dig a ditch about 6 or so inches deep And fertilize it with 5-20-20 at a rate of about 10-15 pounds per 100 feet of row.  Drop potatoes pieces about a foot apart and cover them up. When they come up and get about a foot and a half tall you want to start hilling them until you have about the bottom 6" or so of the palnt covered in dirt, this makes the potatoes more productive and keeps the soil near the plants loose and well drained. It also keep the potatoes from being hit by the sun, and ruined.

Here is a picture of mine growing from last spring about 60 days after planting.

 

That's a good looking potato garden.

Thanks. I grow enough for myself and my neighbors.

I grow Yukon gold too. Best storage potato going. They dont sprout in cool storage and they stay firm because they have less water content. Taste better than Kbac too.

Red poniac is a good new potato, I start digging mine at about the size of a plum, and only leave a few for storage.