Planting potatoes is very easy, and
it's actually my favorite vegetables to plant, because everything
happen underground. So you really don't know what you're gonna get
until you harvest. And They like to be planting in the cool spring
temperatures. Here's the step to planting potatoes.
How to Plant Potatoes
First step is finding a spot that
receives a lot of sun light so at least six to eight hours,
preferably all day Sun if you can swing that. This is the raised bed
where i'm planting mine, and it does get all day sun.
Second step is to make sure that your
soil is the right consistency. Potatoes like light and fluffy soil
because they form their tubers or potatoes underground. They need a
room in order to grow and expand and to form nice big large potatoes.
So you want to take your digging fork or your shovel, and just work
with your soil up really nicely. If you have really heavy clay soil,
I would recommend especially if you're planting potatoes to garden
and raised beds, that way you can control what kind of soil you have
in there. And you won't deal with that heaviness.
Third step is to add starter fertilizer
to your soil, because potatoes do like fertile soil. While you're in
there working off the soil, it's a great time to add some in. i'm
using Organic biotin, sprinkling it over the top and working it in
with my hands.
Fourth step is check your soil PH.
Potatoes do like a PH between about 5 and 6, but they're fairly
adaptable and should produce a pretty good crop for you. However if
you have really high alkaline soil, it's a good idea to add in some
sulfur in your soil to that PH down a little bit and the potatoes
will do that much better.
Step number five is to prep the
potatoes, so if you look at the potatoes you can see a little sprouts
coming out. Those called eyes. So if you have smaller potatoes you
can just go ahead and plant them whole there's just one eye on this
potato. If you got the larger potatoes with several eyes you can cut
the potatoes in pieces. And then you want to let them dry for maybe a
day or two before you plant them that way that cut part can heal over
and it helps prevent rot. So we just want to make sure there's at
least one or two good eyes on each piece.
Step number six is to plant, here's how
I do it. I dig trenches about four to six inches deep, and then I
placed the potatoes eyes facing up, about every eight to twelve
inches. I plant them closer together in raised bed situations. And a
little bit further apart when they're rows. Just keep in mind that
more spaces equals more room for your potatoes to grow a little bit
larger. Then I'm going to go ahead and fill the trench in, and in the
end it should resemble pretty much the way it looked when we started
planting.
Once the plants are about eight to ten
inches tall, i'll go in and kind of draw some of the soil from the
sides around the plant and hill it up around or mound the soul up
around the base of the plant. That helps keep the plant a little bit
cooler. Some longer season varieties of potatoes or indeterminate
potatoes, might even produce a few more tubers if held up making them
a little bit better choice over the shorter season potatoes or
determinate varieties for vertical gardening. Although i've had
pretty mixed results with vertical potato gardening I found, I get
the best result just planting the traditionally in the ground.
Seventh step is to water. Potatoes do
like to be consistently watered. Especially during the flowering
stage, because that's when they're producing their tubers, so keep
your eyes out during that time. I usually give mine a deep soak about
once or twice a week during hottest part of the summer. I just like
to make sure that the top one or two inches of soil dries out between
waterings. So it might vary for you depending of your soil type and
what climate you live in if you live in a more mild climate you mean
off the water is often. Keep on eyes on the consistency of the soil.
Make sure it doesn't stay too wet, because you don't want them to
rot.
That's all there is to planting
potatoes, it's pretty simple. Harvesting is really easy as well. The
plant will tell you when it's time to harvest. Usually they start to
yellow, and kind of fall over and die back an then you'll know
