What is the average yield of a stump of potatoes?

Answer

Dear Ms Lanneau,

After some calculations for the answer to your question, I arrived at a yield of 1.125 kg per potato that you plant/plant. That is approximately one kilo per planted potato.

This figure is of course only a rough average: a lot depends of course on the potato variety you use, at what distance you plant the potatoes, in which soil you work (heavier soils cause less stem growth and therefore less yield), etc…
I assumed a planting distance of 3 potatoes per meter with 0.75 cm between the rows/ridges. I also assumed an average yield of potatoes in Belgium, which is about 45 tons/hectare, but this also varies from year to year.

You have achieved a much higher yield in your vegetable garden than the average yield I calculated. An explanation for this is that you naturally work on a small surface in your vegetable garden and are not working on hectares of large pieces. If you plant hectares and you can’t take care of these plants as well as those few plants in the vegetable garden, then you always have a lower yield because you plant everywhere in the field, even on less good parts such as the edges of your field. These less good pieces cause crop loss and lower the average yield. The chance that you will get diseases on a large field of potato plants is of course much greater than the chance that the few plants in your vegetable garden will get sick. This all plays a role and ensures that you get a higher yield in a vegetable garden without many pesticides than farmers on hectares of arable land. Circumstances are completely different…

Greetings

Lara