[Ash Field Farm]

iam looking at growing my first lot of crops this year i have a polytunlle which i have got to put up yet  i think it might be to big iam not sure wat to grow in it  i know i can start my seedlings off in it any way back to wat i was going to ask potatoes i want to grow a omplete mixture from earlys main crop  and lates and some salad pots as well but for my main crop i want to grow an acer of pots would any know how many roughly i would get from it  how many sacks or kg  if i plant an acer of spuds how many seed pots would i need  for an area that big i know it sounds like iam trying to do alot but our plan is to grow what we eat  and sell the excess after we have given some as fodder to the animals once we buy them that is  that would be another question would i have to do anything to it  to feed it as fodder along with some of there normal  feed 
 thanx

[rustyme]

hello AFF,
           there are lots of factors that can affect the answers to your questions. What type of potatoes are you growing ? new, main crop ? then what spacing will you be using ? then how new or old is the seed ? What varieties ? the list goes on and on . However , you can as a rule expect between 7 and 15 tons an acre . As for the amount of seed you would need , I have only planted smaller areas myself , but I think it would work out at somewhere around 10,000 per acre. You could of course cut multi eyed potatoes into sections and therefore reduce the amount of seed needed, but it would be a mammoth undertaking on that scale. It was however done in days gone by. The other question about feeding to livestock, well I used to boil and mash stockfeed potatoes , for my poultry and ducks etc years ago . I haven't fed them to anything else though , so I can't help on that one. I hope this helps a little bit .


cheers

Russ

[Fluffywelshsheep]

if you have not undertaken anything like this before i would recommend you start small and then work up as you might find that things don't work on your land but other do and you'll get 6 ton of courgette and only 2 potatoes come up in the batch.

Linz