Square B Crop Data

(North is up)



563 g


Died
(0 g)

Potato
Plant 3

Died
(0 g)













Potato
Plant 14

Died
(0 g)




Potato
Plant 18

Died
(0 g)







Potato
Plant 24

Died
(0 g)



Potato
Plant 26

Died
(0 g)

Potato
Plant 27

Died
(0 g)

Potato
Plant 28

Died
(0 g)

Potato
Plant 29

Died
(0 g)










Note: yield in grams is below each plant.

Square synopsis:
Discussion:
The Kennebec White did a small amount better than the Yukon Gold; the yield per plant was about 4% higher.  However the overall yield for the Kennebec White was quite a bit better because only 4 failed to germinate, compared with 6 of the Yukon Gold.  Also they were more severly shaded because of being on the northern half of the square (see below).  So we feel that, for this square, Kennebec White is the potato to plant!  We have no idea why so many failed to sprout; I dug up some of the dead ones and couldn't see any reason for them not doing fine.  Perhaps there weren't enough eyes in the seed potato pieces.

Overall yield in this square was a fair amount less than in 2002.  Total yield per square foot was 0.32 pounds/square foot (assuming 144 square feet for the square); in 2002 the Yukon Gold yielded 0.4 pounds per square foot, or about 20% more that this year.  Possible causes for the low productivity this year are watering problems; the very high smoke level all summer (from forest fires); shading [the 2002 data is from square C which gets no shading; this square is shaded from the late afternoon sun).  This shading effect can be seen by the definite change as you move westward across the rows (NOTE: to prevent from skewing the data I put in the average yield for the potatoes that failed to spout):

Potato Analysis by row
Thus the farther west (lower row number; rows run north to south) the lower the yield.