Average yield per surviving plant = 800 grams/plant
12 Yukon Gold in the south half = 782 grams/plant
14 Kennebec White in the north half = 815 grams/plant
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):
Thus the farther west (lower row number; rows run north to south) the lower the yield.
