Rain would provide needed relief to potato crop
By Scott Mitchell Johnson
Staff Writer
With showers and thunderstorms forecasted for the rest of the week, area potato farmers are hopeful the much needed rain will reinvigorate the crop.
“The potatoes aren’t growing very much right now,” said Brent Buck, who operates Buck Farms in Mapleton with his brothers, Bruce and Barry. “The last couple of weeks they haven’t grown a lot; there’s been enough water in our area to keep them alive, but not to really stimulate growth.
“With the rain we received this weekend, they’ll come back to life and they’ll start growing from that point,” said Buck. “That being said, we’ve probably missed a week to 10 days of growing that we’d hoped — in a perfect world — we would have had.”
Buck said a steady rain would be ideal.
“During a recent thunderstorm, Presque Isle got an inch of rain, but we only one-tenth of an inch in Mapleton,” he said. “If we had a day-and-a-half or two days of a light, steady rain to recharge and get the water down into the ground, we’d be good. When we get a tenth or two or three and then it turns off to be 80 degrees again a few hours later, most of that is lost. It doesn’t have the opportunity to get to the bottom of the plant, or the root cycle, where it needs to.”
Buck said the family operates farms in Mapleton, Chapman and Castle Hill. Russet-type potatoes encompass about half of their 500 potato acres.
Though Buck Farms currently does not irrigate, Buck said the family is “exploring options to develop water sources and possibly develop irrigation on our farm.”
“In this business we’re truly at the mercy of Mother Nature,” he said.
Tim Hobbs, director of development and grower relations for the Maine Potato Board, said he’s seen several farmers irrigating their fields.
“We’ve irrigated at the Porter Seed Farm and there are growers around the county doing the same thing,” he said. “Last weekend we got anywhere from an inch to an inch-and-a-half of rain … some places got two inches … and that’s helping, but we’ve been dry for much of the summer.
“We’re starting to get rain at the right time; during the month of August potatoes really start to bulk up, and that’s when they start needing about an inch of water a week,” said Hobbs. “If we can get more rain this week — and it stays that way through August — we’ll have an ideal crop.”
According to James Dwyer, crops specialist for the University of Maine Cooperative Extension, the relatively dry growing season can be both a blessing and a curse.
“A wet season is what contributes to late blight, which has only been found in a limited number of fields in Aroostook County, central and southern Maine,” he said, “however, the dry conditions will exacerbate the pressure caused by the potato leafhoppers, for example.”
Though leafhoppers have only been spotted in a few fields, numbers are increasing in fields where populations are currently being found.
In addition, Dwyer said the dry weather should have a negative impact on slug populations, which have caused some damage on new potatoes.
“The slug damage appears to be on only the very early planted material,” he said. “Growers may want to monitor this situation.
“The extremely varied shower activity has certainly provided some welcome water for some farms. The forecasted shower activity will hopefully bring some additional water to the crop,” said Dwyer. “As we continue through the later portion of the season, we strongly encourage all growers to continue carefully field scouting; pest situations can change rapidly.”
Buck is optimistic the forecasted rain will become a reality.
“A two-day rain event of light, steady rain would be better for the ground and the plants and a lot more likely to stay damp long enough so that it actually soaks into the ground,” he said. “We’re not in bad shape, but some rain would definitely help the potatoes grow. Having gone through last year with 30-some inches of rain during the season … the challenges were greater than compared to during a dry cycle.”
