Store-Bought Potatoes

[freeasaburt]

I understand the reasoning behind spraying, but if it was *impossible* to grow potatoes without spraying, my ("very low effort") experiment would have totally failed, and the opposite was true. But if you rely on your crops, or you have pretty huge areas of produce, I do get it.
I noticed how Colorado bugs also eat other plants indeed, like tomatoes.

How many there are can also depend on the year, some years when farmers change crops (after potatoes), there's literally thousands of Colorado bugs crawling the roads between the fields here; I guess that despite the spraying, a lot of them still hatch/'change from larvae into bugs' the next year, and when there's no potatoes to be found, they start looking for them. If a 'swarm' like that reaches your veggie garden, you will have to react accordingly (not spraying is not much of an option then i guess) or just give up some of your produce.

 

[muddstopper]

I grow tates two different ways. Here outside my house, I use large containers and found out last year I can get 2 crops a year from my pots. I also grow taters in the soil at my sons house to store for during the winter. I have very little tater bug problems in my pot plated spuds. I attribute that to the soil is seperated from the ground contact where the bugs actually live. The bugs dont seem to move between the ground to inside the containers. My container plants are also just starting to bloom for this years first crop. I move my ground planted spaces each year and this seems to help with the bug population out in the garden. I think it is because I move the plants away from where they are living in the soil, jmo. It takes a lot of land to rotate planting spaces each year, but I find it does seem to help control the bugs. My poted plants ae way ahead of my gound plants due to different planting dates caused by the weather. I can plant 6 0r 8 pots in just a few minutes and do it on my front porch even if its pouring down of rain, where I could think of plowing in the garden. I get excellent yields out of the pots and nice size taters to boot. Since I just discovered last year that two crops a year is possibile planting in pots I am looking for a few more large pots to increase the number of taters I can actually grow. Pot grown taters are also very easy to harvest. just dump the pots upside down and pick up the taters. put the soil back in the pot, add in a few seeds taters and wait on the next crop.

 

[sonny580]

The commercial growers use TONS of a REAL nasty chemicals in tater production AND in the storage sheds! They fumigate the stored taters every so often while in storage and keep the taters for 3 to 5 years before they sell or dump them, so my little sprayings are not even on the scale of what the big guys do. Thats why I dont buy store taters!! Nuff said????

 

[TNTreeHugger]

https://www.cmmcp.org/pesticide-information/pages/spinosad-saccharopolyspora-spinosa#:~:text=Spinosad is practically non-toxic,highly toxic to eastern oysters.

"In general, Spinosad provides effective control of pests belonging to the following groups: moths and butterflies (caterpillars); "
Spinosad...

 

[TNTreeHugger]

Honestly, I can do without white taters all together, they're on that "rarely ever eat" list right under soybeans and corn...okra, eggplant, and kale are higher up the list.

So, for my purposes, and my size garden, I'd much rather buy a few taters from the store when I want to make beef stew, game hens, or potato salad than spray something that will kill my Gulf fritillary butterflies, and others in the yard.

As to the comment about "not dumping it in the pond" well, if covering my little garden won't protect it from potential pesticide gas-off from the farmers fields surrounding my property, how will spraying it in my garden keep it out of the fish pond?

I don't want to argue with you guys about it. I can clearly see how serious potato growers need to use something to protect their crop.
I just don't need to do that since I don't eat much, don't sell what I grow, and can buy good stuff from the Mennonite store up the road.

I am curious to see if I get those bugs though. If I do, I'll use @slowp coffee can method of elimination.

 

[TNTreeHugger]

Everything you never knew you didn't know about taters.

https://spudman.com/

 

[TNTreeHugger]

Potatoes are being dumped west of Spokane and you can get as many as you want. The Hutterites are doing this instead of feeding the taters to cows. Apparently the potato buyers reduced the contracts by 30% and room must be made for this year's crop. It's too far for me to go.

I will plant one spud this year, like usual, and hope the dogs don't dig it up.

Growing up, we had a good sized patch of spuds every year and a root cellar to keep them in. I did not like planting them because it was early in the spring and usually cold and windy. Very windy...

That YT report was from three years ago. (I was wondering why they were still wearing masks. lol)
Are they still giving them away this year?