The Potato year at Luisenhof (Germany)
- Year On the Field Project
- Feb 11
- 3 min read
Frank Kelleners, one of the owners of Luisenhof, was able to provide the Year on the Field Project a full potato report: "In the autumn of 2023 we fertilized the field with horse and cow dung from our stables. In springtime we plowed the fallow, where in the year before rye was cultivated, with an Eberhard mouldboard plow with one share and prepared the soil for further use by working it with a cultivator. Despite it being a very wet spring, we had some days dry enough to allow for further preparations of the field and a plantig beneath sunny sky.
For planting we normally use a Niemeyer Klick drawn by two horses. Since our draft horse Carlos died suddenly last summer, we had to switch to a Teupenia one-row planting machine instead. The original front part of the machine was removed by the previous owner in the 60’s so we use it temporarily with a pair of wheels and steering grip normaly attached to our plow.
The horse, men and machine worked well together so that the planting could be done swift and efficiantly. Like in the previous years we planted potatoes from the sort „Belana“.
Usually the cultivation of potatoes is an easy and unproblematic process for the agricultural community Kelleners/Linden.
In the following weeks we hilled the rows with our Shettland Pony. In the following picture you can see the young carter Jakob (11) guiding the pony and his father Daniel steering the hilling plow.
But the continuing wet weather began creating more and more problems. Several dry days in a row for working the field were seldom and even though potatoes had not been grown on this particular field since 4 years ago, potato beetles suddenly began to multiply in great numbers.
The continued rainfall also led to an increased growth of weeds as well as the spreading of potato blight. The tubers had already been weakened by an infestion in 2023, so when the blight returned this year it had an even easier time spreading. Weeks before the harvest samples taken from the field showed that the mother tubers had mostly only produced a small amount of offshoots. Sometimes as few as one or two new potatoes had sprung from one tuber. The reason for this remained unknown.
4 Weeks ahead of the usual date the plants began to wilt.
Like every year the harvest date was set fix because of our cooperation with the local elementary school. 2nd Graders had learned about potatoes in class extensively and at the end of September 50 students and four teachers came to us to harvest the tubers. Luckily we had two weeks of dry weather beforehand so the ground on the field was firm enough to walk upon.
It’s to be suspected that the frequent rainfall during the cultivation period had led to an increased densification of the soil which in large parts consists of clay. Harvesting the potatoes with a horse drawn machine would have been a torment for both man and animal which we wanted to prevent. So we decided to use a 11HP Bautz tractor instead, which proved to be the right decision. The Wolff potato spinner was struggling with the hardened soil. The students eagerly collected the tubers, but in the end the harvested amount was only a third of what had been average in previous years."
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