My soils tend to be heavy clay - not the potatoes favorite soil. We lighten with compost and humus builders and try to deep dig with a U-bar before tilling. After the furrow is in, I add a fair amount of peat to what will become each hill. Stock is prepared by shaded light exposure in the house (brought up from the cellar) to let eyes develop. If I cut the tuber, I tumble it in a bag with peat moss to stick to the wound and let them scab over for a day or two before going into the ground. When the stock is planted, I amend with a little ag sulpher thrown into the usual fertilizer blend to help drive down the pH. Soil soaker hose down the row and gradual burial with a mulch/soil alternating top dressing to give greater room for potatoes to stretch out as they develop.
Even with all this dinging around, my yields are smaller than I greedily hope for every year and I’m not really sure what I should realistically expect in my conditions. By NO means am I a potato expert and I dream of the day when I magically transform my Minnesota clay into fertile Idaho loams heaped with beautiful piles of dee-licious potatoes.
Oh well, the German Butterballs and the Finnish Gold made for some darned fine eating last year. This year, though, is the year of the perfect potato chip (fried in lard, of course).
Growing Potatoes Under Hay/Straw
http://www.thegardenguy.org/html/potatoes_under_hay.html