Later planted potatoes suffered most – Farmers Guardian

This season has really highlighted the risks of planting potatoes late, especially where there is no irrigation available. Many unirrigated crops never managed to get going properly, so soon became stressed, which has taken its toll on maincrop yields, tuber size and quality.

There has been significant pressure from common scab and a fair amount of secondary growth, even where maleic hydrazide was used. This may be due to it having to be applied in sub-optimal conditions to stressed, dry crops, compromising uptake.

In contrast, potatoes planted early in spring into good, moist seedbeds, and irrigated crops that received sufficient water throughout summer, look reasonable. Indeed, some second early bagged Sagitta on sandy soil has hit yields touching 74 tonnes per hectare, which is fantastic, but is sadly a niche market for this area.

The importance of managing soils well with timely cultivations that let you move quickly once the planting window opens has been clearly reinforced this year.

That may mean ploughing more marginal land earlier to allow sufficient weathering over winter, or doing remedial subsoiling while conditions are good in the autumn.

For those using cover crops, make sure they are burnt down in good time, so that residues can die back and land is not too wet at planting.

Having access to the right equipment and labour is key to optimising planting efficiency, especially where land needs several passes to get crops in, so try not to cut corners.

Early potatoes have been relatively unaffected by the dry summer, and likewise, yields of salad crops generally look reasonable, with good packouts reported due to there being less oversized material. Maincrop ware potatoes, especially later planted chipping varieties, have struggled most, with many crops senescing early and yields and size likely to be down.

The combination of heat and small canopies of senescing crops certainly helped desiccation though, with one-litre/hectare of carfentrazone-ethyl doing a good job on most crops and the odd one not requiring anything to burn off.

Dry matter content is high in many crops, which increases bruising risk, so the rain in early September was very welcome for growers starting harvest, if too late to have any real benefit on tuber bulking or yield.

We can take some positives from the dry season though, not least the very low blight pressure which has allowed for some savings on spray programmes.