You might be interested in how to grow potatoes in your yard if you like potatoes. Find out the best ways to gather your crops.
Growing potatoes in your home yard is a good way to get food that tastes good. It’s easy to grow potatoes, says Doug Oster, a garden expert, author, and radio host from Pittsburgh. “There’s nothing like fresh potatoes out of the garden at harvest time,” he says. They can also be bought in garden shops, farm supply stores, and seed catalogs in a lot of different colors, shapes, and sizes. There’s something for everyone! How to grow potatoes: everything you need to know.
Start by Buying Seed Potatoes
So far, potatoes have been put into three groups: early season (70 to 90 days), mid-season (90 to 110 days), and late season (110 to 130 days). Getting seed potatoes is the first thing you need to do to grow a huge crop of potatoes at home. To be clear, these are not seeds. Instead, they are tubers that are used to grow potato plants in the yard.
Doug says that you should only use certified seed potatoes and not potatoes from the shop. He says, “Certified potatoes are checked to make sure they are disease-free.”
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Do You Need to Pre-sprout Seed Potatoes?
Start the growing season early by letting the seed potatoes “chit” for about a month before you put them outside. Chitting exposes the roots to light, which wakes them up from their dormancy and helps tall sprouts grow. It’s not required to pre-sprout seed potatoes, but it can help the plants come up faster.
Put seed potatoes in open egg boxes or on trays and put them somewhere bright but cool to chit. The eyes will start to sprout after a few weeks. The seed potatoes are ready to plant when the shoots are about an inch long.
Prepping Seed Potatoes
You can put seed potatoes whole or in pieces. Doug says, “If the seed potato is the size of a golf ball, I’ll plant it whole.”
To make more plants, bigger roots are cut into pieces. With care and a clean, sharp knife, cut each seed potato into pieces about the size of an egg. Every piece should have two eyes, or stems. Doug says, “Leave the cut seed potatoes out for two days to heal over and dry.” “This keeps food from going bad.”
How to Plant Seed Potatoes
Potatoes do best in a yard bed that gets lots of sun and has rich, loose soil. You can plant as early as two to four weeks before the last night of frost in the spring. “Some gardeners plant their seed potatoes a month before the last frost, but I like to plant when the soil is warmer, which is about two weeks before the last frost,” says Doug.
When the time is right, Doug likes to dig a hole 8 to 12 inches deep and fill it with compost for a few inches. “Blend in some organic fertilizer, and then put the seed potatoes into the hole with their eyes facing up.”
Some farmers plant potaotes in well-prepared soil that is 3 to 5 inches deep. As the plants grow, they add soil several times to the hills.
Leave 18 to 24 inches between rows and 12 inches between the roots.
Potato Plant Care and Growing Tips
To hill them, Doug says to hoe a few inches of dirt or compost around the stems when the plants are 8 inches tall. When you hill potato plants, the tubers stay covered and out of the sun.
If the roots grow on top of the ground, they will turn green and taste bad. Doug says, “It also raises the yield, keeps the soil warm, and makes drainage better.”
Giving plants and tubers a steady flow of water will help them grow and develop properly. Deep watering potatoes once a week if it hasn’t rained should generally work, but it depends on the soil and temperature as well. If it doesn’t rain enough, tubers can get flat hearts and lose size.