Growing Potatoes: A Beginner’s Guide
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Potatoes are one of the most popular vegetables on earth, and for good reason. They grow in a wide range of climates and conditions, they store well, and they’re delicious! In this blog post we’ll look at how to grow your own potatoes in your garden. You will learn about what kind of potato to use if you’re just starting out, where to plant them, how best to care for them once they start growing and when it’s time to harvest them.
Proven Potato Cultivars
When you are looking to starting growing your own potatoes, the first thing to consider is what type of potatoes you want to grow. You might want to grow a favourite, one you know the family will eat.
But the other option is to try one of the proven potato cultivars that have a good reputation for being easy to grow and producing a good crop. Here are some of the most popular.
Norland, Dark Red Norland
Red-skinned potatoes produce medium yields of an average size. They have white flesh and are good for boiling or frying, but not as much so with baking. The skin is a bright red color that will look great on your dinner table!
Kennebec
The large White potatoes are perfect for boiling, baking and frying. These spuds produce high yields of delicious tubers that can be susceptible to scab or greening when not hilled properly. If you’re looking for a versatile potato with excellent culinary qualities then the white is your best bet.
Red LaSoda
This versatile tuber has been grown in home gardens for years and is known to yield more than Norland. The skins are bright red but may be slightly rough with deep eyes which make them susceptible to common scab.
Yellow skin and flesh
These potatoes are a delight to cook with. A popular variety is the Yukon Gold, which produces smooth tubers and matures earlier than Yellow Finn or Bintje. If you’re not sure about what type of potato to buy then consider one in this category because they store well too!
Red skin, yellow flesh
Desiree is probably the best known and most readily available variety in this group. Others include Saginaw Gold, Iditared, Summit – a hybrid discovered from cross-pollination of strains grown by University of Vermont professor emeritus John Widdowson – and Manitou Red.
What is the Best Time of Year to Plant Potatoes?
Planting new potatoes is a time-consuming process that requires careful planning. To be successful, you have to start at the beginning of the growing season and give ample preparation for planting in between preparing the bed and actually planting.
The best time to plant them is early spring when temperatures are above 45 degrees Fahrenheit (7 degrees Celsius) with cool weather mostly finished but soil temperature begins increasing as well.
The Right Quantity of Potatoes to Plant
Deciding on how many potatoes to plant can be a difficult decision. How much space you have for crops is one factor that will influence your choice, but another important consideration should be the number of potatoes you want to sell or consume. If either option requires more than what’s available in any given year, then it may make sense not to over-plant and risk having too few spuds come harvest time.
Choosing the Right Soil
Have you ever wondered how to plant potatoes? I know, it sounds like a simple question. But the answer is not so clear-cut for some people because they don’t realize that there are actually many things that play an important role in determining which soil should be used when planting them. For instance, their location will affect what type of soil may work best (you can also use potato growing boxes if your land isn’t good enough).
The key difference between using poor quality or bad quality dirt versus high-quality dirt lies within all four factors: moisture content and temperature balancing; drainage vs water saturation; pH levels—the higher the better! Altitude affects this as well due to its ability to dry out quickly.
Grow potatoes in containers
Planting in containers? Remember to use a good potting mix that is 1/3 garden soil, 1/3 soilless potting mix and the final being finished compost. This will ensure that your plant stays healthy.
Seed potatoes should be planted between three and four inches deep, spaced nine to 12 inches apart with the sprouts facing up. Planting them too close together will make for small tubers while planting them farther apart can result in larger ones.
Grow Potatoes In A Burlap Bag
Potatoes can be grown in any number of different style planters. Burlap bags are very popular because they make it easy to move them around and give the potatoes a chance at fresh air!
Caring for Your Potato Plants
Mounds of soil protect the potatoes and keep them strong for an entire growing season. The mound should be up to 6 inches in height, 15 inches from the base of each plant; so that it can guard against weeds while also helping you with irrigation or harvesting later on down the road! This is known as hilling.
In order to keep the ground cool and moist throughout summer, mulch your potatoes with straw between four and six inches deep. This can help you control weeds as well.
Save your potatoes from the pests and diseases by following these tips! First, give them some new soil to grow in each year. To avoid bacterial or fungal disease, try planting at a different spot for every season.
The potato beetle is one of the most common pest problems- but it can be avoided if you inspect under their leaves’ undersides for eggs that are either yellowish-orange clusters (when they’re still getting ready) or black spots on leaf veins where older beetles have left droppings behind when feeding
If any sign of infestation appears then remove those infected parts immediately before more appear.
The Ideal Fertilizer to Use
The ideal fertiliser to use to grow potatoes is manure. Manure will provide the perfect balance for potatoes to grow with a good yield
If you don’t have any then use some other kind of organic fertiliser instead, such as compost or leaf mould.
Companion plants for potatoes
Companion plants help to boost potatoes by helping to keep insects away, boosting soil quality or bringing beneficial insects to the plants. Some of the best companion plants for potatoes include:
- Cabbage, corn and beads – these improve growth and taste
- Horseradish – helps with resistance to disease
- Lettuce, spinach – don’t complete for nutrients so can increase garden yield
- Chamomile, basil, yarrow, parsley, thyme – all improve growth and flavour while bringing beneficial insects to the plants
- Petunias, alyssum – attract beneficial insects
Avoid planting near raspberries, tomatoes, cucumber, squash or pumpkin as they can encourage potato blight.
Carrots, asparagus, fennel, turnip, onion and sunflowers can lead to stunted growth in the potatoes.
Harvesting Your Spuds
New potatoes are always a welcome addition to any meal and they can be harvested within two to three months of planting. To harvest larger potatoes, find out what the recommended growing time is for your variety—usually between 70 and 100 days.
When it’s time, cut back the plant at its base up until you reach where all new growth occurs (the place where roots start forming) then wait about 2 weeks before harvesting so that there’s more room in storage or on your dinner plate.
Successfully harvesting potatoes is easy, too. If they are in a plot of soil in your garden, take out the spade or potato fork and turn over the dirt with it to find any hidden ones down below. Brush off all that dirt on each individual tuber so you can see their good clean skin before allowing them to cure for another week or two somewhere cool and dry where no one will disturb them!
Once harvested from containers like bags as well as new potatoes do not need curing time at all- just brush off some of the earth covering up its wonderfully fresh exterior.
The green parts of the plant are poisonous and should not be ingested.
Disease Control
By controlling the aphids, wireworms and flea beetles on your plants you can reduce diseases.
Seed-borne diseases
The most serious diseases of potatoes are carried in the seed tubers. Many of these, particularly viruses, can be prevented or reduced by using certified seed.
Seed potatoes are one of the most important components for a successful harvest. Planting seed potatoes with any sign of decay will result in an unsuccessful harvest due to rapid destruction and disease introduction by fungi or bacteria that can be found on decaying pieces.
Decaying potato chips also pose as dire consequences because they introduce late blight, which is capable of destroying plants entirely if given enough time. Soil conditions should not exceed 45 degrees Fahrenheit when planting these cut-up bits from other crops – too hot withers them quickly while soil moisture below this range leads to rot via bacterial invasion.
Soil-borne diseases
Be smart about potatoes! Growing these tubers in the same soil year after year causes a buildup of diseases, such as verticillium wilt and scab.
Tomatoes, strawberries, and eggplant also are susceptible to this disease; so it’s best not to plant them around your potato plants or vice versa on successive years.
If you’re growing only one type of vegetable crop per season for an extended period of time (more than two weeks), make sure there is at least 6 feet distance between varieties that can grow near each other. This includes things like tomatoes next to peppers or cucumbers with squash because their leaves might show signs before those from different vegetables do when they get infected by bacteria transmitted through shared water droplets during watering.
Potato scab first appears as small reddish brown spots around the breathing pores (lenticels) in smaller tubers. These lesions then grow larger to form circular, corky masses that are typically isolated or coalesced and may be detrimental to food quality if not treated. Luckily most russet tuber varieties have been shown resistive against potato disease but there is always a risk of infection so it’s important you keep an eye on your potatoes for any signs of illness.
How to grow your own potatoes
Follow this simple process to grow potatoes in containers in any garden
Materials
- Large pot, at least 30cm (1 ft) deep
- Multi-purpose compost
- Seed potatoes
Tools
- Small trowel
- Watering can
Instructions
- Choose a good sized container, checking that it has several drainage holes in the bottom. Fill one-third full with multi-purpose compost to create an aerated growing surface for your plants and flowers.
- Space the potatoes about 1 ft apart and with most of them sprouting up, to encourage healthier growth.
- Cover potatoes with multi-purpose compost until the container is about half full, then water. Put it in a warm sunny place.
- As the potato foliage grows, continue adding multi-purpose compost to bury the stems. Keep on doing this as you watch your plants grow until they fill up your container.
- When the foliage turns yellow in mid-August, it signals that your potatoes are ready to be harvested. In order to harvest them, clean off all of the compost and enjoy a tasty potato!
Notes
Four seed potatoes will yield around 2.3kg (5lb) worth at an average size--but you can always plant more if desired.
