Potato planting starts on farms and in summer cottages. Let's recall the main stages of tuber preparation together with specialists and test our knowledge
Avoiding mistakes and getting a rich harvest, says employees of the Russian Agricultural Center from Karachay-Cherkessia.
In obtaining high and sustainable potato crops, the quality of tubers and their preliminary preparation for planting play an important role.
Seed potatoes begin to be prepared in the fall, when filling seed stocks, selecting healthy, medium-sized tubers.
Autumn sorting does not exempt from the spring bulkhead of potatoes, which is done in advance - before planting the tubers or before laying for germination.
Germination of tubers is one of the main methods of preparing potatoes for planting. If you want to get a light germ, then it is carried out in a bright room with a temperature of 12-14 ° C during the day, 6-8 ° C at night. By the end of the term, green shoots 1-2 mm long will appear on the tubers. This means that the potatoes are ready for planting.
There are other methods of preparing potatoes for planting, which are used in agricultural enterprises. These include the heating and drying of tubers, gardening, treatment with dressing, growth stimulants in a tank mixture with pesticides.
It is advisable to plant potatoes with tubers of approximately equal weight and size.
The use of unsorted tubers leads to thinning, variegation of seedlings, and, consequently, to a decrease in the number of seedlings, which reduces the yield of potato plants.
With the prolonged use of cultivated varieties of potatoes, the problem of infection of tubers with pathogens such as rhizoctonia, common scab, silver scab, fusarium, late blight and others is aggravated.
Therefore, it is necessary to carefully sort out the potato seeds. And only after that proceed to etching.
To combat tuber diseases caused by soil-tuberous infection, single-component fungicidal preparations are used, but complex preparations of fungicidal and insecticidal active substances are more preferable.
Processing significantly reduces the risk of potato disease and pest damage.
Pre-planting treatment of tubers with insecticides allows you to abandon the fight against the Colorado potato beetle during vegetation in general or move it to the end of the growing season. For these purposes, you can use insecticidal drugs.
Pre-planting disinfection of tubers on farms can be carried out before planting, as well as directly during planting, in the openers of a potato planter specially equipped with spraying equipment.
Plant early and by all the rules!
Planting potatoes is extremely important to carry out optimally early, which will allow the potato plant to create a more powerful root system and to well develop the tops. Such plants form tubers faster and reach maturity, therefore, they provide an opportunity to start harvesting earlier.
To determine the planting time of potatoes, it is necessary to take into account that the tuber begins to germinate when the soil temperature passes through 3-5 ° C, and most actively this process occurs at 6-8 ° C. Therefore, you can start planting potatoes when the soil temperature at a depth of 8-10 cm reaches 3-5 ° C. In spring days, the soil temperature rises rapidly and the transition to a more optimal regime (6-8 ° C) occurs usually in 5-6 days.
A great influence on the formation of potato crops has a planting depth. When choosing a landing depth, you must be guided by the following rule: the wetter and cooler the climate, the smaller the landing should be, and vice versa, the drier and hotter the climate, the landing should be deeper.
The planting density of potatoes should be such that the plants on a given feeding area can form a powerful leaf surface and root system and make the best use of solar energy and soil nutrients. Potatoes grow better if the rows are located in the north-south (or close to it) direction, the plants are more evenly illuminated during the day, they overheat less in the midday hours with high temperatures. As a result, an increase in yield is observed.
The optimal planting density for marketable potatoes is in the range of 45-55 thousand bushes per hectare. In seed plots, planting density increases to 60-70 thousand bushes per hectare in order to increase the number of seed tubers.
(Source: official site of the FSBI Russian Agricultural Center).
Read more: https://www.agroxxi.ru/zhurnal-agromir-xxi/stati-rastenievodstvo/kak-podgotovit-klubni-kartofelja-k-posadke-i-sazhat-po-klimaticheskim-pravilam.html