Mayan Gold Potatoes.

[Dione]

Hello from Northern Australia!

I’m trying my hand at potatoes for the very first time in what is our dry season. In some cases you could call it winter for the 3 days you might need long sleeves.
Our “dry” season is cooler and has next to no rain and the humidity drys down to around 50%.

Has anyone grown Mayan Gold potatoes, please?

I am looking at fingerling potatoes as starter varieties as I read that they are more disease resistant than round varieties.
Is this true?

What PH must the soil be?

Do potatoes like an addition of epsom salts at planting?

Blood and bone?

How wet do I keep the soil?

I appreciate any help offered.
Thank you,
~D.

[Dalesman]

Mayan Gold potatoes are fabulous to eat, especially cooked in their skins. I grow them as any other potato: some in 40 litre containers, generally mainly well rotted cow muck, or else on the ground covered with own made garden compost, including a fair amount of shredded woody material.
They don’t want to get too hot, never a problem here but maybe with you, and they need to be moist at all times.
They store reasonably well: currently we’re eating the last few which are still delicious despite growing shoots and going soft and wrinkly.
I grow 20 odd varieties each year and MG are currently number one!
Apart from feeding the soil a la Charles Dowding, I add nothing to the growing medium except comfrey leaves to containers, if I remember. My aim is absolutely best flavour and not yield or size.
HTH.

[Dione]

Thank you so much Dalesman.

I appreciate the effort you put into giving helpful advice.

Regards.

[John]

I grew MG once and they were great. But, Gourmandine is also a very nice French variety. I grew it last year and it is smooth. A nice fingerling is Pink Fir Apple. I have been growing it for 3 years now. It is suggested to water the potato plants frequently during the four weeks following plant appearance above ground !. Soil temperatures around 23 degrees Celsius also stop tuber growth.

[Author]

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