Growing Potatoes | How To Grow Potatoes

When to plant? When to hill? Those pesky potato beetles? Learning how to grow potatoes is all about mastering a few simple procedures. This is the guide to show you how to grow potatoes right. Growing potatoes using this guide will produce a plentiful harvest.

<< Take a moment to sign up for our free newsletter and receive a free copy of our Energy Savings Guide

If you live in Idaho or on Prince Edward Island you probably know someone who grows potatoes and can teach you how to grow potatoes. But for the rest of us, who don’t live in a famous potato growing region where do we go for knowledge on how to grow potatoes?

The answer is right here in this guide to growing potatoes.

Chances are you have worked at growing potatoes already, or maybe you have never planted or dug a hill of potatoes in your life. No matter, wherever you are starting from, once you finish this article you will be eating fresh potatoes all season, because you will know how to grow potatoes.

Planting- How to grow potatoes

We use our Troy-bilt tiller to deeply work the soil before planting. Our first planting date for potatoes is 2 weeks before the last expected spring frost date. In our areas we can usually expect on killer frost around June 1 if you can believe it, so our first few rows of potatoes go in around May 10 – 15. We don’t plant them all, only about 25%.

Before we begin… We purchase or pick out of the root cellar our potato seed to be used for growing potatoes that year. Seed is placed in 5 gallon pails, dampened slightly and covered with old feed bags. The seed is then encouraged to sprout by placing it near a slight heat source.

Why? Sprouted potato seed will emerge from the ground up to once full month faster than un-sprouted seed. Growing potatoes in our very short season area is much easier when we pre-sprout our seed. Learning how to grow potatoes in your area is all about learning these little secrets.

Picking the right seed for growing potatoes

You can just go to the grocery store in the spring and buy a bag of potatoes. This may be your only source of seed for learning how to grow potatoes. Chances are there is a farm supply store in your area though, and that is where you should go to find the right seed for growing potatoes in your area.

At least one, or probably all of the people who work in the farm supply store will be growing potatoes. Learning how to grow potatoes is really all about picking the right seed. Ask them which potato grows best in your area. You will want an early maturing, and a late maturing variety in order to make sure you get a consistent harvest.

Strangely climate change has affected our weather patterns severely. How has this affected the growing of potatoes? Jane and I don’t know from one year to the next about what weather to expect. By planting different varieties we spread the risk of crops failing around due to inconsistent weather. We depend on our garden more than most people, harvesting up to 1000 pounds of potatoes most seasons. Growing potatoes for us is not a hobby, it’s survival and we take it seriously. Climate change is just one more variable we have to contend with.

How to plant- Growing potatoes

We don’t cut our seed as some people suggest. We keep our own seed and have an abundance of it so cutting a perfectly good seed potato to make 5 little diced potato seeds seems silly to us.

There are many such practices we questioned once we read a few books on gardening. The best we have ever read is called 'Become a Better Gardener'

In dry years the whole potato seed provides just enough life to the plant to provide consistent harvest too.

Don’t plant them too deep either. Well tilled land is where you start and gently set the potato seed on top of the soil in a row. Now hill slightly just enough to cover your seed.

<< Take a moment to sign up for our free newsletter and receive a free copy of our Energy Savings Guide

Your plants- how to grow potatoes

You will have the thrill of seeing your first emerging potatoes in about 3 weeks. This puts your first tender sprouts just past the last frost date. Around the middle of June the dreaded Colorado potato beetle will make his appearance. We do wish at times , that this little pest had stayed in Colorado. Sorry to all you folks out there. Nothing slows down growing potatoes like bugs eating the foliage.

Please don’t put poison on your potatoes! This is food you are going to eat after all. A slight reduction in yield is definitely preferable to eating poison, don’t you think.

In 50 years we will look back and say to ourselves “ the stupidest thing we ever did was put poison on the food we grow for ourselves!”

Just pick the bugs and put them in a jar with a lid. The sun will cook them, yes a little cruel, but that is the reality of farming and growing potatoes. Put them back on your land and the cycle is completed except they didn’t eat your potatoes.

When the tops die back it is time for harvest. Of course you can eat some potatoes as soon as the flowering is done and they start to mature. The best ones of the season are these little beauties. We really look forward to this and plant extra for this purpose.

Store your potatoes in a cool, moist environment, but not wet. We use our root cellar.

Seed is sorted out the next March and the cycle begins anew. Enjoy