[Nobbie]

It’s usually advised to rotate crops, but I seem to recall that some have a dedicated bed for potatoes and farmers often grow them year after year in the same field. Had a decent crop this year with no disease apart from blight and it would be convenient to put them in this same bed again next year. Any advice or thoughts on this?

[Aunt Sally]

Blight doesn’t last in the soil… but it does last in any potatoes that have accidentally been left in.

Potatoes are heavy feeders so lots of organic feed needed.  Cow manure is the best.

[Blewit]

We've been growing potatoes in the same no-dig beds since 2017. The way we do it spuds are planted directly into ridges of extra deep compost mulch (which saves earthing them up) so it seemed a shame to keep starting afresh in new beds each year. Annually the beds now get just enough home made compost to top them (about 1.5 inches) and crop really well without any other extra fertiliser or feed.

We've also been saving our own seed spuds since 2012. On a few occasions we tried different varieties (bought from well known certified seed companies) but unfortunately odd plants when they grew had potato YO virus and blackleg. Diseased plants and tubers were thoroughly dug up and disposed of before adjacent plants became affected and pleased to say that subsequent plantings in those beds showed no sign of the previous years problem.
Once the spuds are out a different crop usually follows to make use of the space.

[rowlandwells]

we tend to grow our potato crops on  a rotation basis this year we planted  our potatoes on part of the  plot that hadn't been used for growing potatoes before so being on the other half of the same plot you would thought it would have produced the same crop give or take

but that wasn't to be although we planted the same variety as we always do the crop grew ok with very large tops but when we dug  the potatoes the ground was very wet and potatoes turned out small together with slug damage so instead of harvesting 17 bags like last year we ended up with 7 bags considering we always buy certified Scotch seed it was a complete waist of time and effort so having said that we wont  be growing our potato crop on the same ground  next year 

[jezza]

Hello I've never seen a farmer yet put potatoes in the same field 2 years running they would encounter to many problems, I know one farmer spent £ 40000 last year on insecticides with out the establishment costs    jezza

[spud]

We've been growing potatoes in the same no-dig beds since 2017. The way we do it spuds are planted directly into ridges of extra deep compost mulch (which saves earthing them up) so it seemed a shame to keep starting afresh in new beds each year. Annually the beds now get just enough home made compost to top them (about 1.5 inches) and crop really well without any other extra fertiliser or feed.

We've also been saving our own seed spuds since 2012. On a few occasions we tried different varieties (bought from well known certified seed companies) but unfortunately odd plants when they grew had potato YO virus and blackleg. Diseased plants and tubers were thoroughly dug up and disposed of before adjacent plants became affected and pleased to say that subsequent plantings in those beds showed no sign of the previous years problem.
Once the spuds are out a different crop usually follows to make use of the space.

Great experiment, thanks for sharing, which potatoes have you been saving? do you grow any from true potato seed? i work with top dressing beds similar to yourself and find it works well, i do move the potatoes around each year mind you.

[Blewit]

We've been growing potatoes in the same no-dig beds since 2017. The way we do it spuds are planted directly into ridges of extra deep compost mulch (which saves earthing them up) so it seemed a shame to keep starting afresh in new beds each year. Annually the beds now get just enough home made compost to top them (about 1.5 inches) and crop really well without any other extra fertiliser or feed.

We've also been saving our own seed spuds since 2012. On a few occasions we tried different varieties (bought from well known certified seed companies) but unfortunately odd plants when they grew had potato YO virus and blackleg. Diseased plants and tubers were thoroughly dug up and disposed of before adjacent plants became affected and pleased to say that subsequent plantings in those beds showed no sign of the previous years problem.
Once the spuds are out a different crop usually follows to make use of the space.

Great experiment, thanks for sharing, which potatoes have you been saving? do you grow any from true potato seed? i work with top dressing beds similar to yourself and find it works well, i do move the potatoes around each year mind you.

Have saved all sorts of potatoes over the years but our stalwart variety to save is (blight resistant) Sarpo Kifli. Didn't actually plant any last year but still harvested a great crop just from the volunteers.
Sorry can't comment on true potato seed, not actually done it but would be interested to hear how you get on.

[spud]

I've grown several Sarpo types and found them to be quite good, but they lacked in flavour compared to older types, so for the moment ive moved away from them.

My experience with true potato seed has been poor so far, but plan on trying again in 2024, leaving it more to a natural pollination and seeing what happens.

I do save tubers as seed and have done so for several years, im hoping the TPS will give me more of Landrace type that is more adapted to my garden. Time flys by so quickly and theres so much to do...