Community › Community › General Gardening › Vegetables › Space between potato rows – maximising yield per plant vs per square metre…. › Final outcome…..
5 Charlottes harvested today, 30th July:
43 tubers, 5lb total.
19 small (12oz) – 0.04lb/tuber; 15 medium (2lb 2oz) – 0.14lb/tuber; 9 large (2lb 2oz) – 0.24lb per tuber.
So overall, from 20 tubers: 19lb 6oz, which probably would have been over 20lb if I had let the Red Duke of York grow for longer (only 3lb 2oz from 5 tubers).
This says pretty clearly that you can plant at high density in a suboptimal part of the garden (most shade – albeit still reasonably good sunshine hours) and get 1lb/tuber planted of 1st/2nd earlies planted at 20 tubers per 1.5 square metres.
The soil quality at the end is pretty good with relatively little hard lumps of clay, so it is ready to receive onions for over-wintering in August.
I’m sure you can get more per tuber if you space them out more, but for those for whom space is limiting, this suggests that you can get enough 1st earlies/2nd earlies for 5 – 6 weeks from 1 metre length of a 1.5m wide raised bed.