I’m a new gardening and planted potatoes for the first time. The red potatoes had little scoops with what I think were white flies swarming the holes. The blue potatoes were covered in black and brown pits. Not sure what caused the issue. Any suggestions for changes I could make next year to avoid these problems?
by annatheveggie
4 Comments
Did you use store-bought potting soil? Many of them are like not really done composting, are full of microorganisms that are focused on decomposition, and adding potatoes looks to them like fresh material added to the compost.
Like the other comment, they look like they came out of the compost pile. I mix garden dirt, sterile medium and finished homemade compost in large pots and get over five pounds of clean taters per seed potato. Use true seed potatoes.
Yes I used soil I bought from the store that was labeled as raised bed for vegetable. I also used seed potatoes I ordered from a local company.
Sterilize your soil with boiling water next time, looks like composting bacteria got to them. Also maybe reuse some known finished soil next time. You can probably get the same soil you used this round to be good for next round by letting it sit and finish decomposing before planting.