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In order to grow a good crop of potatoes, it is necessary not only to plant it, but also to skillfully care for potatoes. Gardeners need to know when and how to properly spray, water and hill potatoes.

Potato care - spraying potatoes

It is best, for preventive purposes, to spray potatoes shortly before flowering. Choose a day when you are absolutely sure that it will not rain in the near future, otherwise all your efforts will be in vain, and the product will simply be washed off the potato bushes with streams of water.

Spraying potato bushes is best done in the morning or, conversely, in the evening, because during the day, especially when the weather is hot, the solution evaporates quickly from the tops. If you want to protect potatoes from such diseases as late blight or early blight, then spraying for potato care must be carried out in a fairly strict time frame.

When and how to spray potatoes

The first processing of potatoes is carried out even before the appearance of signs of the disease, when the plants reach a height of about 20 cm, and the tops close on the beds. The next treatment is carried out after about a week if the weather is dry, and after 4 days if there is precipitation. If the precipitation is heavy enough, then spraying the potatoes will have to be repeated.

To protect potato bushes from the Colorado potato beetle, spraying with special preparations is carried out during the period when the first larvae begin to appear on the tops. They are easy to spot because they have a conspicuous red color.

Since the larvae hatch in three generations, spraying also has to be repeated three times with an interval of about 10 days. To care for potato bushes, be sure to pay attention to what is indicated in the annotation, as a rule, all the necessary processing times are determined there. When spraying, pay attention to which way the wind is blowing and try not to spray the potatoes against the wind, otherwise most of the solution will settle on your own clothes.

What is needed for spraying potatoes

But you should start by purchasing a special sprayer. Of course, our grandmothers successfully used an ordinary broom for this purpose, but with the help of a specialized apparatus it is much more convenient to do this, and today they are not so expensive - within 1000 rubles. Such a device will come in handy more than once. And it saves a lot of time and energy.

Potato Care - Hilling Potatoes

When to spud potatoes to care for him

Experienced gardeners recommend hilling for the first time as soon as the potatoes give their first shoots - from 3 to 5 leaves. For the first time, a mound of about 10 cm should be poured around the bushes. The plants are completely covered with earth.

The second hilling of potatoes is carried out when the potato shoots break through the mound of the first hilling and reappear above the ground. Pay attention to the fact that they are strong and have a bright green color. Again completely sprinkle them with earth.

The third hilling is carried out when the potato bushes reach a height of about 25 cm. Now they do not need to be completely covered with soil, it is enough just to sprinkle the loosened earth to the base of the bushes. It's even better if you put a little earth in the middle of the bushes so that their leaves unfold and the bush takes up more space.

Three rounds is enough.

Caring for potato bushes - why is hilling necessary?

To begin with, let's figure out what, in fact, hilling potatoes gives and why it increases the yield. It turns out that the whole thing is in the structure of the root system of the potato. It has a surface structure and spreads mainly in breadth, and not in the depth of the soil. But for this she needs to create certain conditions.

If the soil is loose, then the roots of the potato bush will try to capture as much space around them as possible. The tubers that are located and formed under the fringe also prefer a loose soil structure and therefore there are always more of these tubers in the mound of earth that is formed as a result of hilling. Here they do not meet strong resistance, and the tubers are smooth, rounded and filled with starch. If the potatoes are not spudded, and even in cases where the soil is clayey, heavy, then the tubers simply do not have space for development, and therefore they turn out to be small, clumsy and sick. If you harvest such a crop, this does not mean that the potato has degenerated or is a bad variety. Most likely, you simply did not do enough loosening the soil and hilling potatoes.

Potato Care: Video

Caring for potatoes is simple, except for hilling and spraying potatoes, the rest of the care will not take you much time.

With a crop of 500 kg of potatoes, a lot also grows from a weave of tops - 300 - 400 kg. If you at least partially force the nutrients from the tops to pass into the tubers, you can significantly increase the yield. This can be done in a special way, which is called senication.

In order to increase the yield, one single spraying is enough. The results are impressive - without any effort, the crop will grow by at least 10 - 15%, the tubers become more beautiful, tastier and better stored. The incidence of disease is greatly reduced.

What is eaten with

Recently, there has been interest in a special method of foliar feeding of potatoes - senication. Its essence lies in the fact that by spraying with a concentrated solution of superphosphate, they cause artificial aging of the tops and the outflow of nutrition into the tubers.

When to Senicate

At first glance, the information is contradictory, some advise spraying immediately after flowering, others - 15-20 days after flowering. Both of them are right. It is necessary to process plants 20 days before harvesting. But not before they bloom. That is, early varieties are sprayed a week before harvesting, ultra-early ones, such as Timo, are not sprayed at all. Medium ones are processed a week after flowering, and medium-late - after 15 - 20 days. It is important to guess with the weather conditions.

Spraying is carried out in clear calm weather. It is useless to waste the solution if this event is carried out before the rain or immediately after the rain, as well as during dew. Water will dilute and wash off the solution, the result will be inferior. The best time to spray is around noon when the dew is gone and the plants are dehydrated. You can spray in the evening. This will increase the outflow of plastic substances from the stems and leaves into the tubers at night.

Cooking "living water"

All you need is a bucket of water, a sprayer and 2 kg of superphosphate. If you buy double superphosphate, it will take 1 kg. If it was not possible to get them, you can also use diammophoska, but it will require 3 kg. We must immediately warn that superphosphate is poorly soluble in water. Therefore, the solution is prepared two hours before use. Pour 2 kg of superphosphate into 10 liters of water and mix thoroughly. After 2 hours, the settled solution is poured into another bucket and filtered into a sprayer through a 3-4-layer gauze.

Advanced growers add some micronutrients or even a little herbicide. But we do not advise beginners in senication to experiment. It is better to first check such “evil” solutions on several bushes and, after making sure of a positive result, use it as your own know-how next year. By the way, the sediment left from superphosphate is an excellent fertilizer, and it can be used for any crop, embedding it into the soil with a chopper.

What to expect from "old age"

Some gardeners exaggerate, claiming that the yield increases by 2-3 times. Perhaps, in some wet years, when the potatoes are fattening, leaving the tops, this is true. But in the usual average dry summer, the increase is more modest - 10 - 15%. The best part is that the tubers are very beautiful, marketable, practically undamaged by diseases. And the harvest is perfectly stored all winter, without requiring bulkheads. Such spraying has a particularly beneficial effect on taste. Starch content increases significantly, and even varieties prone to watery and soapy tubers become tasty and crumbly.

ATTENTION! In the absence of a clearly pronounced effect of yellowing and dying off of the above-ground mass, 8-9 days after the first spraying, but no later than 10 days before the start of harvesting, a second senication is carried out with the same solution.

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During flowering, intensive formation of tubers occurs, the number and size of which largely depend on the conditions under which the flowering bush grew. During this important period, potatoes need watering, feeding and protection from Colorado potato beetles. We will consider all three aspects of care, and we will also separately analyze cases why potatoes do not bloom or flowers appear for the second time in a season. Often this depends on the variety, but sometimes the intervention of the gardener is required.

Features of flowering potatoes. A person needs only tubers. Even the tops, which absorb a lot of useful substances from the soil, are perceived as a necessary addition that has to be endured. What can we say about the flowers: they do seem to be useless parasites, greedily pulling all the best out of the plant. So the theory was born that you can significantly increase the yield if you remove the flowers and upper leaves during the budding period.

But the potato is a complex living organism with its own breeding program, for which the tubers are just a fallback option for maintaining the population. The bush reacts to the removal of buds and upper leaves as a threat to existence.

An injured plant will either simply get sick in a mild form, or will form even more buds to make up for the losses. Naturally, the microelements necessary for the development of new flowers will be taken away from the tubers. A classic situation in which the miser pays twice. New buds will not appear if already pollinated flowers are removed. But then the procedure does not make sense at all, since the flowers have already absorbed the beneficial substances.

There is another danger. There will always be at least one diseased bush in a potato field. When cutting buds and leaves, the gardener does not disinfect tools and gloves after processing each plant, therefore, through open wounds on the shoots, he infects them with fungal infections. So, because of the desire to slightly increase the yield, you can lose a significant part of it.

In addition, it has been experimentally established that on bushes with removed flowers, one or two more tubers are actually formed than on plants that have faded naturally. But if the bushes are not injured, the potatoes grow larger and have a more regular shape.

It is advisable to remove buds only when growing a rare variety for planting material, when the number of tubers is more important than their size.

Potato flowering intensity

If you see profusely flowering bushes - most likely, in front of you - one of the old proven varieties. Recently, breeders have bred varieties that bloom very little or are completely devoid of flowers. Ovaries on such bushes are extremely rare. For example, the super early varieties Rocco and Mariella do not bloom. Variety Spring in a dry summer may also not bloom, and with normal humidity it fades very quickly. Bushes planted in the shade do not bloom well.

Potato flowering does not directly affect the formation and growth of tubers, but the absence of flowers often indicates that the gardener has made a mistake and the crop is in jeopardy.

In addition to the characteristics of the variety and the shading of the site, there are two more reasons why potatoes do not bloom:

• plants lack moisture. If watering is not urgently organized, the tubers underground will stop forming and will not grow, as a result, the harvest harvested in the fall will be scanty;
• in the soil - an excess of moisture and nitrogen fertilizers. In this case, powerful stems, instead of being covered with buds, lie down. It is necessary to stop watering, cut off the tops of the tops (about a quarter of the length of the stems), then add ash to the soil (a glass per 1 linear meter of the bed), loosen the ground and slightly spud the bushes.

In wet weather, after a long drought, it occasionally happens that potatoes bloom a second time. The fact is that due to the heat, the tubers stop growing in size, and when heavy rains come, the “second spring” begins at the potato and the bush tries to make up for lost time. The organization of watering is the best prevention of this problem. Bushes from which the buds were removed can also bloom again.

Watering potatoes during flowering

During the period of budding and flowering, potato bushes need moisture. If there is no rain, then when the first buds appear, the plants should be watered abundantly: at the rate of at least 3 liters of water per bush. The need for watering is easy to determine: just touch the ground at a depth of 5-6 cm from the surface. If it is wet, it is better to postpone watering, as excessive dampness can damage young tubers.

Water the potatoes in the morning or evening. On the second day after this, you need to loosen the soil and spud the bushes, so that the roots will receive not only water, but also oxygen. After two weeks, if the soil dries out again, you can water the beds again.

In dry weather, after watering, it is advisable to cover the ground with mulch: dry hay or straw. The procedure will take not so much time and effort, but you don’t have to worry that the tubers dug out in the fall will be small or cracked.

Fertilizing flowering potatoes

Emerging tubers need enhanced nutrition. Usually two basal top dressings of potatoes are carried out during flowering:

• at the beginning of budding, in order to speed up flowering (a mixture of 3 tablespoons of ash with a teaspoon of potassium sulfate is added to the soil per linear meter of beds);
• 4-5 days after the start of mass flowering, in order to accelerate the growth of tubers (2 tablespoons of superphosphate - per linear meter of beds).

Also, at the beginning of budding, foliar top dressing can be done. Approximate options for 10 liters of water (per one hundred square meters of a potato field):

• 30-40 g of urea;
• 50 g of potassium sulfate;
• 10–20 g of ammonium nitrate;
• mix 2 g of copper sulfate, 10 g of potassium salt, 40 g of ammonium nitrate, 200 g of superphosphate.

Protecting flowering potatoes from Colorado potato beetles

The problem is that potatoes during flowering cannot be sprayed with chemicals to combat Colorado potato beetles. Pests will have to be destroyed manually. In addition to mechanical collection in a bucket, folk remedies will help:

• sift a kilogram of ash, mix with 10 liters of water, boil, when it cools down - add 40-50 g of laundry soap, crushed on a fine grater;
• dust the bushes with cornmeal.

Any of these remedies can be used about once every 7-10 days. If there are too many pests, it is advisable to spray flowering potatoes with a biological product. Suitable, for example, "Bitoxibacillin", "Akarin" or "Fitoverm".

Caring for potatoes after flowering

When the potatoes bloom, it is impossible to water the bushes: excessive moisture is a favorable environment for the development of late blight. You also don't need to feed.

While the tops are green, they spray it several more times with some kind of folk remedy for Colorado potato beetles. Potent chemicals can be used no later than 2 months before harvesting. Therefore, such funds are only suitable for late varieties.

When to spray potatoes from a beetle?

A neighbor treats potato tubers from a beetle before planting with Taboo. Potatoes grow already with the content of a component that repels beetles. We refused such a tool. After all, it turns out that the plant is saturated with chemistry!

We prefer to spray potatoes with insecticides, when we find the first larvae - at the end of June.

This year we used the "Tan-rek" tool. The instructions for the preparation indicate that the time of death of insects is 2 days. A perfectly acceptable period.

What time of day is best to spray the Colorado potato beetle? We always process potatoes in the evening. And it’s not hot, and it’s easier for the plants.

Question: Is it possible to spray potatoes during flowering?

Our potatoes are starting to bloom, and just yesterday we processed them from the Colorado potato beetle. Nothing terrible happened - she is cheerful, she has not lost a single flower. We always do this and the potato harvest is always excellent.

How to spray potatoes from a beetle: our experience

And now in more detail how and with what to spray potatoes from the Colorado potato beetle, effectively and without unnecessary troubles.

We bought the Tan-Rek tool in one of the country stores. Price - 8 rubles per bag with an ampoule. It took 4 such ampoules for our area (total 32 rubles).

The agent was dissolved in a 20-liter canister with water.

For spraying, a garden pollinator "Beetle" was used. By the way, it is very convenient for them to spray plants from aphids, whitefly, weevil, to make foliar top dressing. Baba Tanya sprays potatoes from the beetle with another chemical agent - Intavir.

Folk remedies against chemistry: what else can you spray potatoes from the Colorado potato beetle

Birch tar: 100 grams diluted in 8-10 liters of water and sprayed every three days;

Onion peel: 200 g pour 10 liters of warm water, leave for 24 hours, spray potatoes;

Bitter wormwood: 200 g mixed with 1 glass of wood ash, pour 10 liters of hot water, leave for 6 hours;

Dusting with wood ash: spend in the morning, on dew. After a day or two, most insects die;

A decoction of celandine. The leaves are placed in a bucket, poured with cold water, boiled for 20-30 minutes. Then the broth is diluted in a ratio of 1 to 20;

Infusion of garlic. 1 cup chopped garlic and pour 10 liters of warm water, leave for 1 day;

Some plants repel the Colorado potato beetle. For example, if you plant garlic, beans or coriander, marigolds or nasturtium in the neighborhood, their smell can scare away beetles.