"Stubby" wrote in message
...
Steve wrote:

shazzbat wrote:

"Pavel314" wrote in message
...

I have six 25' rows of potatoes in the garden this year. I've grown
them


for

many years now but this year has presented an unusual potato situation.

As a background, we live in Maryland, U.S.A., about 25 miles northeast
of
Baltimore. We till a bit of horse and sheep manure into the garden
every
Fall so that it has a chance to rot and compost before planting season.
During the Winter, we scatter the ashes from the wood stove on the
garden
area. In the Spring, we till the garden several times to get all of the
additives properly spread.

This year, some of the potatoes aren't doing so well and the bad ones
are


in

a strange geometric pattern. The bad potato plants are about a third
the
size of the good ones, although all were planted on the same afternoon.


Let

O be a good potato plant and * be a stunted one. The pattern is
something
like:

O O O O O O O O
O O O O O O O O
* * * * O O O O
* * * * O O O O (LAWN)
* * * * O O O O
* * * * O O O O

The garden plants on all three sides of the potato section are doing
well;
to the right of the potato section is the lawn.

We have several varieties of potatoes, each variety being found in both


the

stunted and normal section, so it's not a varietal problem. Spacing


between

the plants and between the rows is the same in all areas.

There doesn't seem to be any reason why the soil in the bad-plant area


would

be different from the rest of the garden, given the spreading and
mixing
that's done in both the Fall and the Spring. Should be the same pH and
nutrient mix.

They all get equal amounts of water and drainage should be the same
throughout the garden.

Very puzzling; any ideas will be appreciated.



Are there any trees nearby ? I had this problem in the first year on the
allotment. All the rows were tall at both ends, getting smaller towards
the
centre like a very shallow "V", even though each row was a different
variety. It turned out that roots from a tree in an adjoining garden
was
stealing the nutrients/water. I cut the roots, (the tree's owner said
it
was for the chop anyway) and no problem since.

Steve



Paul, I'm wondering if you over did it with the wood ashes. Tilling, even
repeatedly, may not be moving additives around the garden as much as you
think. Do you have a test kit to check the pH? It's easy to check and I
would wonder if the bad section has a higher pH than potatoes like.

I agree with the above. Potatoes do not like sweet soil. If you start
with seed potatoes and divide them, we used to roll the cuts in sulfur to
make them acid and to prevent infections. The wood ashs would be wrong.

Thanks for your responses. I did a pH test this morning, taking samples from
the good area and the bad area. The good area came out slightly
bluish-green, probably around 8.0, while the bad area came out plain green,
about 7.0. Darn, I'd hoped that pH was the problem. Maybe I'll try a
nutrient test between the two areas tomorrow.

There are no tree roots in the area, although that's something to watch out
for in the future.

On the bright side, I did get last year's compost transferred to the new
bins this morning. Details at
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/rbfarm/mgarden.html

Paul