Potatoes are a garden staple, and growing your own can be a rewarding experience. Knowing How To Grow Potatoes successfully involves understanding a few key steps, from planting at the right time to proper hilling and harvesting. This guide will walk you through each stage, ensuring you can enjoy a bountiful potato harvest from your own backyard.
Timing is Key: When to Plant Potatoes
One of the first questions for anyone learning how to grow potatoes is about timing. Planting at the right time is crucial for a healthy crop. Generally, the best time to plant potatoes is about two to three weeks before your average last frost date in the spring. It’s important to avoid planting too early in cold, waterlogged soil, as seed potatoes can rot under these conditions.
While you might be eager to get started as soon as possible, patience is key. If your potato plants experience a heavy frost after they emerge from the soil, they will likely produce new shoots. However, each time the plants die back due to frost, it stresses them, leading to a smaller and later harvest.
It’s better to wait for the soil to warm up a bit. Warmer soil encourages quicker emergence and steady, stress-free growth. For many northern states, late March to early May is an ideal window for planting potatoes. In warmer southern regions, you can plant potatoes in late fall or early winter for a winter or early spring harvest.
Nature often provides cues to help you determine the right planting time. Local gardeners often have their own natural indicators, whether it’s the melting snow on a nearby mountain, the first dandelions blooming, or the emergence of specific insects. Talking to experienced gardeners in your area can reveal these helpful local references for planting potatoes.
Seed Potatoes: Cutting and Preparation
When your seed potatoes arrive, you might notice they vary in size, some larger than others. A common question is whether to cut larger seed potatoes into pieces. Cutting larger seed potatoes is a common practice and can be advantageous. By cutting, you can effectively stretch your seed potato supply and potentially increase your overall yield.
If you decide to cut your seed potatoes, it’s crucial to ensure each piece has at least two “eyes” or buds. These eyes are where new sprouts will emerge. Use a clean, sharp knife to cut the potato into substantial pieces shortly before you plan to plant them.
After cutting, allowing the pieces to “callus” over is beneficial. Leaving the cut pieces in a cool, humid environment overnight gives them time to form a callus. This callus acts as a protective layer, helping to prevent infection when the cut potato comes into contact with soil.
However, there’s also a good reason to plant seed potatoes whole, especially if you face issues with soil pests like wireworms or maggots. These pests are attracted to the exposed, juicy flesh of cut potatoes. Planting whole potatoes minimizes this exposed surface, potentially reducing pest damage. The decision to cut or plant whole seed potatoes often depends on your specific garden conditions and pest pressures.
Soil Preparation for Potatoes
Proper soil preparation is fundamental for successfully growing potatoes. The ideal soil for potatoes is a loose, deep loam that retains moisture while also providing good drainage. Fortunately, potatoes are quite adaptable and can grow in less-than-perfect soil conditions. However, amending your soil to improve its structure and fertility will significantly boost your potato yield.
Incorporating plenty of organic matter is highly recommended for potato beds. It’s best to work organic matter or compost into the soil in the fall before spring planting. This timing allows the soil to properly integrate the added nutrients and organic material.
While potatoes benefit from rich soil, it’s important to be mindful of the type of organic matter you use. Fresh manure should be avoided when preparing soil for potatoes. Fresh manure can encourage the development of potato scab, a pathogen that causes unsightly blemishes on the potato skin, although the potatoes are still edible.
To avoid scab, use only well-composted manure when amending your potato beds. If composted manure isn’t available, a balanced organic fertilizer is a good alternative. A fertilizer with an NPK ratio like 4-2-2 (Nitrogen-Phosphorus-Potassium) is suitable. Be cautious about using fertilizers too high in Nitrogen, as excessive nitrogen can lead to vigorous leafy growth at the expense of tuber production, resulting in large plants with few potatoes.
Planting Potatoes: Depth and Spacing
Once your soil is prepared, you’re ready to plant your seed potatoes. The process involves creating shallow trenches and placing the potatoes at the correct depth and spacing.
Begin by digging a trench that is about 6 to 8 inches deep. In loose soil, you might be able to create this trench simply with a rake. However, in heavier or more compacted soils, you may need to use a shovel or hoe to dig the trench.
Place your cut seed potato pieces, or whole seed potatoes, in the trench, spacing them 10 to 12 inches apart. If you are planting larger, whole potatoes, they will produce bigger plants and benefit from a bit more space. In this case, space them 12 to 16 inches apart.
Row spacing is also important. A spacing of 36 inches between rows is generally adequate. If you have extra garden space, increasing the distance between rows can make the subsequent hilling process easier.
For fingerling potatoes and other smaller varieties, you can plant them slightly closer together, but maintain a minimum spacing of 8 inches between plants to allow for proper development. After placing the seed potatoes in the trenches, cover them with about 3 to 4 inches of soil, leaving the trench partially filled.
Hilling Potatoes: The Crucial Step
Hilling is arguably the most critical and labor-intensive part of growing potatoes, but it’s also essential for maximizing your harvest. Hilling refers to the practice of mounding soil up around the potato plants as they grow.
When your potato plants reach about 8 to 10 inches in height, it’s time for the first hilling. Carefully bring soil up around the base of the potato vines from both sides of the row. In loose soils, you can often do this with a rake. If your soil is more compacted, you might need to loosen it first with a cultivator or hoe before raking the soil up around the plants.
Be gentle when cultivating and hilling to avoid disturbing the young potato plants and their developing root systems. Hilling serves several important purposes. It encourages the formation of more potatoes along the buried portion of the stem and deepens the root system, keeping the roots cooler and moister. For the first hilling, aim to cover the vines so that only the top leaves are still exposed.
A second hilling is typically done about 2 to 3 weeks after the first one. For this second hilling, bring an additional 2 to 4 inches of soil around the vines.
Alternatively, or after the second hilling, you can apply a mulch. A loose mulch that allows the soil to breathe is ideal. Straw is an excellent choice for potato mulch because it breathes well and helps retain moisture. Leaves can also be used as mulch, but make sure they are not applied too thickly, as a dense layer of leaves can become compacted and impede air circulation.
A good layer of mulch can also serve as a barrier against potato beetles, making it harder for them to reach the plants. Additionally, mulch provides habitat for beneficial insects that prey on potato beetle larvae, offering a natural form of pest control. Beyond its practical benefits, hilling also creates neatly mounded rows in your potato patch, which many gardeners find aesthetically pleasing.
Harvesting New Potatoes
The anticipation of harvesting your homegrown potatoes is one of the joys of gardening. You can start harvesting “new potatoes” relatively early in the growing season. Potatoes begin to form tubers after the plant flowers. Several weeks after flowering, you can carefully check for new potatoes.
To harvest new potatoes, gently dig into the loose soil along the sides of the potato vines. You shouldn’t need to dig very deep to find young, thin-skinned new potatoes. These can be carefully removed from the plant without disturbing the rest of the developing potatoes, allowing the plant to continue maturing and producing a larger crop.
Waxy potato varieties are particularly well-suited for harvesting as new potatoes. Varieties like ‘All Red’, with its vibrant red skin and pink-streaked flesh, and ‘Yukon Gold’, known for its early maturity and excellent flavor, are great choices for enjoying as new potatoes.
Harvesting Mature Potatoes
Knowing when to harvest your mature potato crop is just as important as knowing when to plant. Mature potatoes are ready to harvest when the potato vines naturally die back and lose most of their green color. This dieback can occur naturally as the potatoes reach full maturity, or it can be triggered by a frost.
About two weeks before you plan to harvest your mature potatoes, it’s beneficial to mow down the potato vines. This practice helps to toughen the potato skins, which is crucial for good storage. Thicker skins protect the potatoes from damage and dehydration during storage.
Potatoes can tolerate a few light frosts in the ground, but it’s essential to harvest them before the ground freezes or before a heavy frost threatens to damage the potatoes closest to the soil surface. Once harvested, properly cured and stored potatoes can last for several months, providing you with a supply of homegrown potatoes throughout the fall and winter.
Growing potatoes can be a deeply satisfying part of gardening. By following these steps on how to grow potatoes, from planting and hilling to harvesting, you’ll be well on your way to enjoying the taste of your own freshly dug potatoes.
