[Note: You can plant potatoes from St. Patrick’s Day through the end of July]!
It all started about 20 years ago when I got the idea that I could grow potatoes in our backyard from whole potatoes purchased at the store. We had a few that sprouted and sent up shoots but they did not have good quality, and some just didn’t come up at all and rotted. I found out that ALL non-organic (conventional) potatoes at the store are treated with sprout-inhibitor.
You can grow beautiful, delicious ‘taters’ from organic store-bought (no sprout-inhibitor) if you let them grow ‘eyes’ – little buds which will form a potato plant when planted in good soil. Many groceries carry organic varieties, but not all have good keeping qualities.
Last year I ordered catalog seed stock (Red Pontiac, Kennebec, and Yukon Gold) with those eating and keeping qualities I wanted.
Depending on variety and weather, the potato growing season is about three or four months from planting to digging. I plant twice. Once close to St. Patrick’s Day and again around the end of July. This way we can have potatoes all year around and some left over (wrinkled with eyes) to hold over winter for the next St. Paddy’s Day.
My goal is to grow enough of my own potatoes to last the whole winter from a second late-summer planting, and then it will cost me nothing but my time to plant them. I plan to hold over some of those long-keeping potatoes from the fall harvest and use them as my seed potatoes in the spring.
Some varieties will last 6 months under proper storage conditions, such as in a cool, dark basement. For the longest storage, check out: Kennebecs, Katahdin, Red Chieftain, Yukon Gold, Burbank Russet, German Butterball, and Red Pontiac.
Our last big fall harvest of potatoes stored beautifully in the cool garage (in a dark place) without any spoiling. We set some potatoes aside to grow eyes for the next spring.
If you fail to save some of the last crop, gardening nurseries and tractor supply stores sell spring seed potatoes at around a $1/lb (depending on where you live). Five pounds will do a whole 4′ x 8′ raised bed and then some.
What You Need To Plant One 4′ x 4′ Square:
- a sharp knife
- 6 medium potatoes with eyes (sprouting), cut in half into 12 total pieces
- fertile, loose soil
- a hand trowel or shovel to dig 12 holes
Directions:
Cut each potato so there are at least 2 eyes per piece. In a 4’x4′ raised bed (16 sq. ft.) or in a row in the garden, dig 12 holes. In the 4’x4′, I make 3 rows of 4 holes each.
Hilling Potatoes:
I plant the cut pieces only 4-5″ deep. Plant them – sprouts pointing up – in the loosest and best soil you can. Finish planting by mounding the soil up another 3″ over ground level into little mounds or hills. The pieces are now about 7-8″ under the soil. The mounding up is so the soil will be looser allowing the potatoes less of a restricted area to grow their biggest. Also, digging will be fairly easy when they are ready for harvest. In a few weeks, the newly-forming baby potatoes under the soil will need plenty of rain or watering to swell into big spuds.
We have never had any serious pests growing spuds. We find them totally easy to grow.
Wait to cover the potato pieces with soil once all are in place so you can properly space each hill.
The following video is excellent if you are serious in wanting a great crop.
Y
ou can harvest ‘new potatoes‘ as early as 2 months after planting by gently digging down along the side of a hill and nabbing some of the young 1-2″ spuds. We like to use our potato fork, which makes us less likely to cut or stab our produce.
New potatoes are not a particular variety; they just refer to the freshly harvested potatoes of a new season. Fresh, right out of the garden, this is our favorite way to eat potatoes. Just boil in water until soft, pour off the water, and add lots of organic butter (or olive oil), sea salt and black pepper, and chopped fresh parsley!
Happy growing and Bon Appétit, my friend!
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Thanks for reading!
JES says
Thank you for the thorough information here! I am going to give this a serious go… and those “taters” look SO tasty!
Clint Baker says
I want to try my hand at Fingerling Potatoes soon! Looks like everything is goinng well in your garden!
MIRIAM LUIZA says
É muito apetitoso o prato! Será que dá para plantar em jardineiras?
It is very tasty dish! Will it work to plant in planters?
Jacqueline says
Hello, dear Miriam! Is the weather getting cooler there? I definitely think that short season potatoes MAY work (I am not sure) in pots, but they need lots of water and pots dry out pretty fast. Have you grown them before?
Jacqueline says
Brittany, I think men especially love them. Our guys are all about anything I fix with potatoes 🙂 You’d think they were starving 🙂 I count on my later planting for the seed potatoes for spring…the other just don’t linger her long enough!
Christine says
Hi! Your photos are making my mouth water! Potatoes are so fantastic! I’m going to plant some for the first time this year. I have a small yard, so I never thought I could. But then I read about growing potatoes vertically in old tires. Hopefully it will actually work.
I hopped over here from the Faithful Bloggers directory, and I’m glad I found your site! Because if your natural focus, I thought you might like the contest I’ve got going on my blog.
God Bless!
Christine @ Coffee in the Garden
Mrs. T. says
I grew potatoes for the first time last year and was astounded at how much better they are than store bought. I have been craving them all winter long! I put in one small row of seed potatoes yesterday and my mother is sending more our way later this week. Thanks for the wonderful information!
Happy First Day of Spring!
Naomi says
Jacqueline, what great information! I really want to do this but we are still experiencing cold temps like every other day it seems. Should I wait until we are done with freezing temps or can I start it indoors? We have to do a raised bed because our ground is this hard dirt/clay. Thanks again for sharing your wisdom. :o)
Jacqueline says
Naomi,
Last year I did our potatoes in late April, b/c I just couldn’t get to them earlier and we still had a great crop. I would just wait…doing them inside it just extra work. The dark brown soil will warm more than you realize, and those seed potatoes will be nice and toasty …it takes about 2 weeks for the green tops to come up, so wait until it won’t nip them 🙂 Blessings !
Jenn @ The Purposeful Mom says
I remember my mom doing this…we live in town so we don’t have much for a garden–yet! But this year I will do more 🙂 This is such a good, affordable way to continue with organic potatoes, definitely something I want to do once we have a bigger garden.
Thank you for linking up at Thrifty Thursday!
Jacqueline says
You are welcome, Jenn! I do hope it works for you there 🙂 Blessings to you and your household, dear friend.
Anna @ Feminine Adventures says
I just bought heirloom seeds and hope to save seeds from the plants to plant again next year. Maybe next year I’ll be brave enough to try seeding potatoes.
Thanks so much for linking up at Thrifty Thursday, dear Jacqueline.
Nicole says
How interesting. We aren’t thinking of potatoes to garden once we move into our new home. But I know of some other veggies that we will be starting off with. I’m going to definitely look around and see what else you’ve posted about gardening! So helpful! 🙂 And thank you again for linking back- it is such a blessing!
Angell says
Hi Jacqueline,
I’m new to gardening, and with the purchase of our first home this past summer, we are hoping to start a garden.
Thank you for putting this together. I hope to plant potatoes as well. I know that new gardeners like to OVER plant lol. Well hubby knows how to garden…me? um…I kill everything lol. I bought a parsley plant home from the produce section and transferred it to a pot…within a week, it died AND grew MOLD!! Needless to say I have a lot to learn lol!
I’m an email subscriber and I’ll be saving this email in my garden section! 🙂
Jacqueline says
Dear Angell,
I am sorry that that parsley was such an ill-mannered plant ! It just didn’t know how nice of a home it was going to have 🙂 But, seriously, you will work along side your husband and learn all kinds of things and in time, be a very good gardener who can teach fro experience!! Many blessings to you in your new adventure!!
JES says
Hiya! Just to let you know, we followed your advice with the potatoes and harvested last week. I also tried your “favorite way to eat potatoes” recipe with our small taters and it was a hit 🙂 Made them twice already… Yum! It was exciting since everything on our plate was from our farm. Thanks for your helpful advice. I know it takes time to write and take pictures but it really benefited and inspired us… P.S. It was funny because I noticed I was the first comment saying I was going to try it and wanted to let you know we really followed through 🙂 Have a wonderful week!
Jacqueline says
JES,
You are so kind to let me know how they came out. Did you harvest a bumper crop? Potatoes are one of my favorite garden crops!!
Karen Malek says
Hi Jaqui! I’m trying “smart pots” for the first time this year. I followed mfg. instructions and supposedly will yield 100# of potatoes in 1 30 gal. container! So far I have a lot of plants up and flourishing. I got my organic seed from Urban Farmer Seeds (www.ufseeds.com) in Westfield, also a new find this year. It was a very pleasant experience doing business with him. He had many varieties of organic seed potatoes, even a blue potato (I was too timid to try) and I paid $6.#. I’ll keep you posted as to the overall success.
Jacqueline says
Thank you, Karen! I would love to know about how they work…I’m tempted to put some seed potatoes in still, but I am tired!!!!!