How to Grow Potatoes

Potatoes are relatively inexpensive to purchase, but freshly dug potatoes from your own home garden seem to have a flavor all their own. Potatoes are not grown from seed but from seed potatoes, which sprout underground and grow more tasty tubers.

There are at least 100 varieties of seed potatoes grown by gardeners in the United States, including several heirloom potatoes. Local growers may even specialize in lesser known varieties that come in different shapes, sizes, and colors.

Learn about different potato varieties and how to plant seed potatoes so that you can grow your own potatoes.

How to Plant Potatoes

Cold-climate gardeners usually plant potatoes in mid to late spring. In a warm climate, you will dobest planting in either late summer or late winter, so the plants aren't trying to grow during the hottest months.

Plant seed potato pieces with the cut-side down (eyes should face up) in a hole or trench that's 6 inches deep. Leave 12 inches of space around each on all sides. Sprinkle 2 tablespoons of a low-nitrogen, high-phosphorous fertilizer between each segment. Then cover the potatoes and fertilizer with 2 inches of soil and water well.

It's fairly easy to grow potatoes successfully if you follow some basic guidelines:

• To extend your potato growing season, choose an early variety as well as a late-season variety. You plant these at the same time, but the late-season variety is harvested several weeks after you've already dug the main season potatoes.
• Buy certified disease-free seed potatoes. Attempting to plant potatoes purchased from the grocery store is a gamble. Besides the disease problem, potatoes are often treated with a growth inhibitor to keep them from sprouting in the grocery store.
• Don't plant potatoes where tomatoes or eggplant were grown the year before. These vegetables are in the same nightshade family as potatoes and can attract similar pests and problems.

Planting potatoes can be done in one of two ways: a trench-and-hill method that involves adding soil around the stem as it grows upward, and a simple scatter method.

• Trench method: A traditional potato planting method involves digging a shallow trench about 6 inches deep and placing the seed potatoes in the trench, eyes facing up. Then cover the potatoes with a couple of inches of soil. As the potato plant grows, thesoil is continually hilled up along the sides of the plants. This keeps the soil around the developing tubers loose, and it keeps the surface tubers from being exposed to sunlight, which will turn them green and somewhat toxic. Add soil to the hill whenever the plants reach about four to six inches in height. You can stop hilling up soil when the plants begin to flower.
• Scatter method: Some gardeners prefer to simply lay the seed potatoes right on the soil and then cover them with a few inches of mulch. You can continue layering mulch as the plants grow. If you have a rodent problem, this method is probably not your best choice.

Potato Care

Light

To bolster top growth, which will support the growth of the roots, plant potatoes in full sun. They can handle part shade, but it's the lush top growth that feeds the tubers underground. The more sun, the better—at least six to eight hours per day. The tubers need to be protected from the sun if they grow near the surface or they will turn green. Hilling soil around the growing plants prevents this. Hilling is the process of mounding soil up around plant stem as it grows.

Soil

Grow your potatoes in soil with an acidic pH between 5.0 and 6.0. Potatoes grown in soils with a higher pH seem prone to scab, which produces rough spots on the potato. Potatoes don't like particularly rich soil. If you have a good amount of organic matter in the soil and the pH is neutral to acidic, the potatoes should be happy. The soil needs to be loose and well-draining. If you have soil that is heavy in clay, you will need to prepare it with loose soil down to the depth where the potato tubers will grow.

Water

Potato plants rely on a steady water supply. Make sure the plants receive at least one inch of water per week. They are sensitive to drought conditions, especially when they flower, as that is the peak time for forming the potato tubers. Mulching around the plants can help retain moisture.

Temperature and Humidity

Potatoes should not be planted until the soil temperature reaches at least 45 degrees Fahrenheit, and preferably 50 degrees. Summer crops do best in areas where the summers are cool, as the potato tubers grow best when the soil temperature is 60 to 70 degrees Fahrenheit, and they stop growing when the soil hits 80 degrees Fahrenheit. Mulching around the plant, such as with a thick layer of straw, can keep the soil as much as 10 degrees Fahrenheit cooler. Areas with hot summers often plant potatoes as a winter crop. Potatoes don't have a preference when it comes to air humidity.

Fertilizer

You can fertilize your potatoes with anorganic, slow-release fertilizer when you plant them. Every couple of weeks, give them a feeding with diluted liquid fertilizer or fish emulsion.

Potato Varieties

There are more than 100 varieties of potatoes commonly sold, generally divided into three categories:

• Russets and long white potatoes, which work well for potatoes that will be baked, boiled, or fried
• Round white potatoes, which are most commonly used if you will boil potatoes or use them to make potato chips
• Red-skinned potatoes, which are frequently used for boiling, baking, mashing, or in potato salads

Within these categories, varieties are divided into early, mid-season, and late potatoes. Some popular cultivars are listed here.

Early-season Varieties

Popular varieties grown for early-season harvest include:

• ‘Irish Cobbler’ has a tannish skin and irregular shape. It works well for boiling and mashing.
• ‘Norland’ has red skin and is known to be resistant to potatoscab.
• ‘Mountain Rose’ has red skin and pink flesh; it is known to be resistant to someviruses.

Mid-seasonVarieties

Popular varieties grown for mid-season harvest include:

• ‘Red Pontiac’ has red skin. It is considered one of the easiest red potatoes to grow.
• ‘Viking’ is a very productive red-skin potato.
• ‘Chieftan’ is a red-skin potato known to be resistant to potato scab. It storeswell.
• 'Yukon Gold' is a very popular thin-skinned potato with yellow flesh. It has no eyes.

LateVarieties

Popular varieties grown for late-season harvest include:

• ‘Katahdin’ has tan skin and is resistant to someviruses.
• ‘Kennebec’ is another tan-skinned potato. It is bred to be resistant to some viruses as well as lateblight.
• ‘Elba’ is a tan-skin potato with large round tubers; it resists blight and potatoscab.

If you want to try growing some unique potatoes, look for these:

• 'French Fingerling' is a long, slender, red-skinned potato that doesn't need peeling. They are best suited for roasting, baking, and steaming.
• 'All Blue' is a medium-sized potato with an unusual blue skin and flesh that keeps well. Suited for sautéing steaming, or mashing.
  

Propagating Potatoes

Seed potatoes aren't really seeds at all. They are full-size potatoes bred for the purpose of growing more potatoes. They start producing shoots from the potato eyes. You've probably seen this happen when you've stored potatoes in the kitchen for too long.

Seed potatoes can be planted whole or cut into pieces, with each piece containing an eye or two (or three). Because potatoes can rot if the soil is too cool or wet, many gardeners prefer to allow the cut pieces to callus over by leaving them exposed overnight. You can also purchase a powdered fungicide for dusting onto the pieces, to avoid rotting.

Harvesting

New potatoes are small, immature potatoes. You can harvest a few of these without harm to the plant once the plant reaches about one foot in height—about 50 days after planting. When the plant is in flower, the new potatoes are generally ready to harvest. Gently feel around in the soil near the plant and lift them out.

Expect to wait two to four months (up to 120 days) for potatoes to reach their full size. The entire crop is ready to harvest once the tops of the plants die off. You can leave the potatoes in the ground for a few weeks longer, if the soil is not wet.

Harvest carefully by hand or with a shovel or shovel. Turn the soil over and search through for the round or oval treasures. The tubers can branch out, and digging in with a fork is a sure-fire way of piercing a potato or two. Damaged potatoes are still edible, but they won't keep for long.

Growing Potatoes in Containers

Growing potatoes in a container avoids the complications of hilling and takes up less space. You can grow potatoes in a tall container such as a clean garbage can, whiskey barrel, a five-gallon pail, or in a planting bag designed for this purpose. Make sure the container you choose has drainage holes in the bottom, and raise up the container a few inches if it is resting on a hard surface so that excess water can drain from the container.

The basic process is to add six inches of fast-draininghigh-quality potting soilto the bottom of the container and mix in an organic, slow-releasefertilizer Then, spread out your seed potatoes and cover them with a few inches of soil. Place the container in a location that receives six to eight hours of sun per day, and keep the soil moist but not soggy. Keep adding potting soil to the container as the plants begin to grow.

Use a diluted liquid fertilizer, every couple of weeks as your potatoes grow. Container-grown potatoes need plenty of water, Plants that are grown in containers generally require more feeding than they do when growing in the ground.

Common Pests and Plant Diseases

Potatoes are prone to problems, so be observant for these:

• Beetles and aphids can defoliate the plants. Monitor for them early in the season, before they become a major problem. Check the undersides of leaves for the eggs and larvae of common beetle pests like theColorado potato beetle. You can usually remove these by hand.
• Thin, red wireworms attack underground. Rotating the location where you plant your potatoes each year will help avoid wireworms.
• Scab is a common potato disease that looks like raised, corky areas on the skin or sunken holes on the surface. Lowering the soil pH will help control scab. Add peat moss to the planting area.
• Late blight(the cause of the Irish potato famine) turns the foliage black, then moldy. Burn or dispose of the foliage. Do not compost it. The potatoes can still be harvested, but you should wait several weeks. To avoid this problem, use certified disease-resistant seed potatoes.
  

From: thespruce