To increase the soil temperature to ensure that the production of potato, the straw was used to cover the soil when planting potato in the south of China in winter. When the straw-covered winter potato is harvested, there exist several problems such as big digging resistance, easy blocking, difficult separation of straw, and low excavation rate and high injury rate of potato. In order to solve these problems, a harvester for winter planting potato with a straw separation device is developed. The harvester is composed of divided shovel, rod elevating chain, straw separating mechanism and oscillating screen which can finish potato digging, separate potato from soil and straws , orderly placement of potato in one step. This article described the main structure and working principle of the machine. In addition , according to theorem of vector projection, kinetic energy and kinematics, the structure of key parts were designed and the parameters were determined. To evaluate the performance of the harvester, field experiment was carried out, in which the obvious rate of potato, injury rate of potato and reliability were taken as the indexes and the machine forward speed, tilt angle of sieve plate and number of lifting lever were taken as the factors. The multi-objective optimization method was adopted to analyze the experimental data. The results show that when the machine forward speed was 0.4 m?s -1, working finger speed was 3 m?s -1, and the number of working pole was 6, the obvious rate of potato was 99.5%, injury rate of potato was 4.2%, the reliability was 80.4%. The comprehensive performance index was better and meet the using requirements of potato harvester.