Alemania: New potatoes: defying the weather with fleece and irrigation

Thanks to an ingenious system of fleece, foil and irrigation, the potato stocks could develop optimally even in the cold spring. After early planting at the beginning of February, the first potatoes are already being sold - initially in the Holste family farm shop and shortly afterwards at the wholesale market in Bremen.

The covering of the rows of potatoes with fleece and film ensure that the stocks do not overheat during the day and do not cool down during the night. "This requires a lot of work and experience," explains farmer Henning Holste.

While film and fleece are used by many new potato growers, Holste is breaking new ground in irrigation. In contrast to previous years, for the first time the company has abandoned a frost protection system and set it to a drip irrigation. "It saves water and energy" says the Martfelder farmer.

Last year, around 102,000 hectares of potatoes were cultivated in Lower Saxony, of which some 4,000 hectares were used for new potatoes, a large proportion of them under foil.

Photo: Erich Klug/ LWK Niedersachsen

Anti-frost irrigation is used whenever late frosts endanger the sensitive potato plants. The process, which is widely used with fruit and vegetables, protects the plants from freezing. The reason for this is the "crystallisation heat", which is released when the water passes from the liquid to the solid state.

Anti-frost irrigation is significantly more water and energy intensive than the drip irrigation. Here, rather than distributing the water over a large area using small sprinklers, it is transported directly to the potato roots using hoses.