Growing Your Own Potatoes

Potatoes are a great crop for southern gardeners. All you need is seed potatoes and quite a bit of room since these plants like to grow and grow big. (Short on space? visit thegardenhelper.com for alternate growing methods.)

Getting Started

You can start your potato crop anytime the soil is warm enough to work. Potatoes aren't particularly picky about being too cold, but they do need to be able to push through the soil. Pick a space where the potatoes will have lots of room to spread and grow big and fat. Remember, your seed potatoes will be set every 15 inches in rows that are about 2 1/2 to 3 feet apart. Yeah, I wasn't kidding about needing a lot of space.

You'll want to purchase your seed potatoes a few days before planting, which might mean going to the "big kid" garden store, not just the hardware store that happens to have a gardening section. Prepare for lots of gardening lingo and don't be afraid to ask questions. And don't try and cheat on this step, by for instance taking an uncooked baking potato and planting it in the ground. Sure, you might get a crop, but your chances of success and yumminess greatly increase when you use certified seed potatoes.

Okay, so you have your dirt, and your seed potatoes. About a day or two before you plant, cut the seed potatoes into chunks. Each chunk needs to have at least one or two "eyes." This step is very important since the eye is where the potato will sprout. Set the cut seeds outside somewhere where they can get warm and sunny. Be sure to keep them nice and dry as well.

Time to Plant
On planting day, dig your trenches (remember, you will be setting the seed potatoes 15 inches apart in rows that are about 2 1/2 to 3 feet apart, so plan accordingly!) Then, pop your seed potatoes into the trench cut side down. Cover them loosely with 3 to 4 inches of dirt and give them a nice drink - but not a soaking. After a few days, you will see strange, giant, alien-like leaves busting through the soil. Okay, so I'm exaggerating a little bit there, but the first time we planted potatoes, I was amazed at just how large and funky the sprouts can look pushing up through the ground. So if this happens to you, don't be scared, be proud.

Potato Care
As your potatoes grow, you will want to make sure the roots (also known as tubers) stay sufficiently covered with dirt. Remember, underneath the ground, baby potatoes are growing and swelling and reaching up towards the light - do not let them get near the light. They will turn green and sometimes even toxic if they are exposed to the sun before they are mature. So every so often, as the plants grow taller, hill loose dirt around the plants. This will ensure that your potatoes don't get hit by the sun too early and will also encourage the potatoes to get bigger and fatter which means more space for sour cream and butter come harvest time!



Your potatoes will need lots of water. Be sure to keep an eye on them especially when it gets hot and when they are flowering (did you know potatoes flower? pretty cool, huh?) Just like most of your vegetable plants, water early in the morning so that the potatoes have time to dry out before nighttime. Not only do damp plants during the evening hours raise the potential for bacteria and disease, there is a theory that plants truly do sleep during the night and watering them forces them to stay awake, thus making it difficult for them to grow. Makes sense to me that all living things would need some type of restorative period to be at optimum performance.


Potato Harvest
Now comes the fun part - harvest! Your potatoes will be ready for harvest 2 to 3 weeks after the plants have stopped flowering. The potatoes you will gather at this phase are sometimes referred to as "new" potatoes and will be quite a bit smaller than if you wait an additional 2 to 3 weeks after the foliage dies back to harvest. Whichever you choose, when you begin digging, be very, very careful. It's easy to damage the fragile skin of the potatoes if you use heavy tools like a spade or a hoe, so be gentle. After all your potatoes are gathered, if you are expecting nice, dry weather, lay the potatoes out on top of the dirt, unwashed, for 2 to 3 days to give them time to "cure" which basically means prepare their skins for storage. If it's wet, move them somewhere cool and dry to cure instead. Undamaged, cured potatoes store well in cool dry locations for anywhere from 3 to 6 months, if you can keep yourself from frying the whole batch into curly fries at the first chance you get. For more information about growing potatoes, the mound method, or even how to grow potatoes inside old tires, visit thegardenhelper.com.