Harvesting potatoes

As soon as dying( yellowing, drying) of the lower leaves begins, the harvest is formed and the tops should be cut off immediately. Usually this happens one week after the flowers dry. To determine the maturity of the crop, leave one blooming shrub of each variety. Approximately 12-15 days after mowing, proceed to the potato digging.

The beveled tops must be removed from the potato field. First, it is dried and then burned.

When the tops are mowing, phytophthora is not infected with potatoes, and the growth of the tubers will stop and their skins will coarsen, which means they will be less damaged during digging and transportation and less spoilage during storage.

Potato tops should not be placed in compost, as it contains venom of solanine and, as a rule, is infected with phytophthora. The ashes of the tops, however, like the dried potato peelings, enrich the mineral elements, especially potassium and microelements.

Harvest the potatoes in dry, sunny weather. After digging up the potatoes, leave it for a few hours in the air, so that the tubers dry. Then carefully inspect the nests of tubers and select for a planting material of the next year a tuber the size of a chicken egg. They should be taken only from the yielding nests. If the potatoes are clean, it should be put to dry under a canopy, pre-sprinkled with a solution of "Phytosporin" to destroy the pathogens that fell on the tubers from the soil. If the tubers are dirty, they must first be washed with water and then sprayed with "Phytosporin", and then dried for a couple of days under a canopy. You can dry the potatoes in the barn, covering for the night with newspapers in case of sudden frosts. Then the tubers are put in sacks or boxes and put away for storage.

Diseases and problems

Of all the diseases of potatoes during its cultivation, the main danger is the phytophthora, which appears in June. First, small black or brown spots appear on the lower leaves, then they grow in size, the foliage turns yellow, the tops dwell and die. Phytophthora never develops on soils rich in copper, so the preventive introduction of copper during planting and the spraying of the tops with a solution of the copper preparation in the initial stage of potato growth perfectly help plants to cope with this scourge. Before planting, the planting material should be treated with "Phytosporin" or a solution of copper sulfate( Bordeaux liquid or "Hom") according to the standards specified in the instructions. Before the last hilling, repeat the treatment. If the phytophthora still appeared, then spraying should be done again.

It should be remembered that spraying with "Phytosporin" can be carried out at any time, just before consumption, the potatoes should be washed with water and only after that, cleaned or cooked in a uniform. But after processing with preparations containing copper( bordoska, copper sulfate, "Hom"), it should take 3 weeks before it can be eaten.

Potato scab is detected after harvesting. It appears as black bulbous spots on the tubers. Occurs with excess nitrogen or calcium in the soil, usually because of too large doses of nitrogen fertilizers or when introducing fresh manure, as well as in the spring deoxidation of soils. The next year, when planting in a hole, several boric acid crystals should be added or the soil poured before planting with a solution of boric acid( 2 g per 10 liters of water).

In dry and hot summer the scab is more pronounced.

It does not affect taste and storage.

Sometimes the tops of the plants curl and fall into a ball, growth stops - this is a viral disease, the bush must be immediately torn and burned, so that the insects do not transfer the disease to healthy plants.

Sometimes the tubers crack. Most often, this is caused by copious watering or prolonged rain following a prolonged drought: the amount of water in the tubers rises sharply, and the peel breaks, then the rupture becomes skinned. But there are also varieties with such uneven growth of tubers, causing their cracking. In large tubers, voids are formed due to uneven moisture in the soil.

Of the pests the most terrible is the Colorado beetle. His salmon-orange larva, at first small, grows rapidly and turns into a pretty-looking little bug with yellow longitudinal strips on black wings. This cute beetle, like his offspring, is extremely prolific and gluttonous. If there are few beetles, then collect them together with the larvae in a jar with salt water and then destroy. Birds( with the exception of guinea-pigs) do not peck them, so feeding beetles to chickens is useless.

If there are many beetles, then we will have to use pesticides against them. To most of them the beetle has adapted for a long time, but there is a new preparation "Sonnet" which while with the beetle perfectly consults. As soon as you notice the first beetle or its larva, immediately process the "Sonnet" all potato field. One ampoule of the drug, diluted in 10 liters of water, is sufficient for processing hundreds of plantings only once a season. The drug is absorbed by the leaves and functions in them all season, without penetrating into the tubers."Sonnet" destroys chitinous integuments in adult beetles( their wings disappear), and the wings do not grow in the larvae. Such insects can not mate and give offspring.

Another fairly common pest of potato is wireworm( light, hard, strong worm 3-4 cm long).It's a larva of a click beetle, gnawing through the potato tubers. The wireworm must be collected and torn in half when digging the soil.

Sometimes it is advised to dig in shallowly cut potato tubers into pieces and mark this place with a stick. The wirewoman will come to the treat. After 3-4 days, excavate the soil and destroy the larvae. It is tedious and unproductive. If there is a lot of wireworm( and he lives in thickets of wheatgrass), then bring in the hole when planting potatoes "Bazudin" - this is a chemical preparation, but he is neutralized by the time of digging potatoes. Now there is a new biopreparation "Nemabakt", which causes the death of a wireworm. In fact, it is a symbiosis of a bacterium and a predatory nematode, which, penetrating the wire, eats it from the inside and then leaves the empty shell.

Sometimes potato tubers are literally eaten by soil-infecting pests: a bear( large, 4-5 cm long, an insect that resembles a cancer), biting scoops( dirty brown naked caterpillars of a large furry night moth), a larva of the May bush( thick white caterpillar with light brownhead) or mouse-voles.

Against a bear, you can use the drug "Thunder", it also acts against the scoop. Against scoop and wireworm can be used drugs "Bazudin" or "Pochin", against wireworm - biopreparation "Nemabakt".

You can do a trap against a bear: in autumn dig holes with a depth of 40-50 cm and fill them with horse manure. Medvedka will arrange a nest in them and stay for the winter. This place should be marked with a stick, and in the spring to unearth and destroy the pest with the offspring. With a large population of this pest of potato field in the fall, it is treated with "Carbathion".

The larva of the May Khrushchev can also cause considerable damage to the roots of the potato. The beetle and its larva must be destroyed everywhere.

Another nasty pest is the herbivorous nematode. Nematodes are small( no more than 0.5 mm), transparent, and therefore no visible threadlike worms, literally capturing the whole world. These are the most numerous inhabitants of our planet. They are everywhere and everywhere, including in the cell sap of plants. When nematodes are too densely populate the plant, it begins to grow poorly and develop. In potatoes, this is manifested in a sharp decline in yield and in the grinding of tubers. Potato nematode for wintering comes to the surface of the tuber and turns into a cyst - on the peel of potatoes appear the smallest, resembling poppy dewdrops. Cysts of nematodes can be stored for several years in the soil and, as soon as potatoes are planted in this field, they will immediately turn into worms that penetrate the tubers. Cysts are easily transferred to the soles of shoes from place to place. The nematodes themselves move rather slowly.

If you have sharply decreased potato yields with good care and a healthy planting material, then maybe you have exhausted the soil with prolonged growing of potatoes in one place, or you use your own planting material too long( varieties have accumulated a lot of viral infection, althoughexternally and look normal), or the field was too heavily inhabited by the nematode. It would be good to transfer the potato field to another place for several years, but if this is not possible, then at least improve the soil. To improve the soil, sow the field immediately after harvesting the potatoes with winter rye. In the spring, cut it and dig it along with the greens and roots. And only then plant the potatoes. Put in the hole in the hole "Azotobacterin", "Phosphorobacterin", AMB, "Fitosporin", sow white mustard.

Update your planting material. Try not to buy varieties of foreign breeding, which usually quickly accumulate a viral infection. Improve your planting material by growing a piece of planting material from sprouts or seeds. Plant nematode-resistant varieties( but no more than two years in one place, so as not to withdraw a nematode resistant to this variety).