Growing Potatoes

“Po-tay-toes! Boil em, mash em, stick em in a stew. Lovely big golden chips with a nice piece of fried fish.“

Samwise Gamgee

Solanum Tuberosum.

If you’re a potato lover, you HAVE to save room for growing your own potatoes in your garden! Overall, they have been one of the easiest crops as far as planting and care. Harvesting when you have hard clay (like we do) can be a challenge to avoid slicing into your delicious tubers with the fork or shovel.

Thankfully, since converting to Back to Eden Gardening, the spuds form inside the layered wood chips. Most of which are harvested simply by pulling up the whole plant! The rest are easily hand dug out.

Try to keep your potato patch away from other night shade varieties (especially tomatoes, as they are the closest relative) to avoid sharing of pests and diseases.

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Potato Vocabulary

Potato Eyes

Also referred to as, buds. The portion of the vegetable that can form a new plant. Sections of a potato with Eyes can be cut up and spaced out separately while planting, or the entire potato with Eyes can be planted underground. We have personally done them both ways, but have better success planting an entire potato with Eyes underground than when cutting them up into separate chunks.

Potato Fork

A tool used specifically when harvesting potatoes. When planting in containers isn’t needed; however, if the soil is compacted a potato fork will definitely be needed.

Seed Potato

Potatoes that will develop Eyes to grow new potato plants. You can specifically purchase Seed Potatoes or unsprayed and organic potatoes that have sprouted Eyes in your pantry can be planted as well! I absolutely adore Red Pontiac potatoes, so if I’m going to purchase a full-sized potato variety, I always add them to the garden.

Tuber

The actual potato you dig out of the ground to boil, roast, bake, or fry is the potato tuber. It holds all of the nutrients to create new plants. Each potato tuber is attached to a Mother Tuber via a stolon (underground stem). At the end of the growing season, the potato spud is detatched from the stolon and the spent Mother Tater.

Mother Tuber

The original potato seed that was planted in the ground at the beginning of the season from which the stolons, new tubers, and above ground stems grow from.

Potato Fruit

The fruit of a potato forms after the flower has died off. It is a small green and round cherry-sized berry that very closely resembles cherry tomatoes. This is NOT edible and is poisonous. Potatoes are apart of the Solonacea family along with tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, and other Nightshades (including Deadly Nightshade). The toxin in this fruit, Solanine, can also be present in potato tubers that begun turning green from sunlight exposure. This is why mounding your potato plants is so important to keep the potatoes covered.

Seeds from the potato fruit will likely produce a different variety from cross pollination and take many seasons to begin producing harvestable potatoes.

Fingerling

A small, finger-shaped potato that are mature when harvested. Not to be confused with a “New” potato, these are their own separate variety of potatoes. My very, absolute FAVORITE is the Peruvian Purple!

New

A New potato is not a separate variety of potato. It is a relative young fad showing up in grocery stores. They are simply traditional full-sized potatoes that have been harvested early. Their skin is not fully matured and will spoil quickly if not eaten shortly after purchasing or harvesting. The benefit of New potatoes IS their thin skin doesn’t need to be peeled before boiling or cooking.

We do not harvest our potatoes early, as we prefer the skins on with our full grown potatoes.

Inground Potatoes

It is usually recommended to wait on planting your potatoes until after the first frost, and/or once the soil reached 50 F for best growth. Many gardeners I’ve known have begun planting once the soil is workable (not frozen). I have always gone by the latter and have never lost my crop due to late frost in the spring.

When planting in an in-ground garden bed, you will want to dig a shallow trench (keep your trenches about 3′ apart). Each potato seed can be planted 12″ apart and cover with loose soil. As the green foliage emerges, you will mound mulch, hay, grass clippings, straw, etc. Around your plant.

I have yet to master the art of storing root vegetables overwinter. This basket was forgotten about in an area that was clearly too humid and warm to stunt the growth of the Eyes on these potatoes. I decided to give them a shot in the ground this spring, although I’m a little concerned their tubers have developed too far to actually produce. (Which is why they are spaced together so tightly, in preparation for a high failure rate.)

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Container Potatoes

Growing potatoes in containers can be as simple as reusing old pots, grow bags, or even repurposing laundry baskets!

Whichever option you choose, make sure it has good drainage before planting. Too much water retention will cause your potatoes to rot.

Place a few inches of potting soil at the base of your container and sit the potato seeds onto of the soil. Cover with another inch or two of potting soil or compost. As the green foliage emerges, continue to cover with soil to as you would when planting in ground. Leaving only 6″ of foliage above the surface.

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When to Harvest

Harvest your mature potatoes about 2 weeks after the green foliage has died back.

May the Best Potato Win

Russet vs Peruvian Purple.

This was just a pretty wicked find in my neglected potato basket. Who would have thought potatoes could be so brutal?!