Growing Tasty Tubers

Have you ever compared a store bought tomato to a homegrown one? Due to the breakdown of sugars in store bought tomatoes, you probably noticed a better flavor in the homegrown variety. Potatoes work in much the same way. A fresh potato from the garden tastes noticeably sweeter and richer.

To start your own potato garden, I absolutely recommend you plant with only certified, disease-free seed potatoes. Potato disease can limit growth and plague other potato related plants, especially tomatoes.

Two to four weeks before the last spring frost, cut a cubic inch out of a seed potato with a good “eye”, this is a visible growing point, and plant it four inches deep in the soil. Your soil should be rich in organic matter, somewhat sandy, and well-draining.

Irish Eyes

The eye will form a potato plant that will grow upward and form leaves and horizontal stems called rhizomes. Potatoes, which are fleshy tubers, will form on the ends of these rhizomes. The plant needs a steady supply of water to prevent hollow or knobby tubers. A potato grows when it’s moist, and stops growing when it’s dry. These growth spurts can lead to a gnarly potato that will look ugly even next to the worst cut of beef.

As the plant grows it becomes necessary to hill soil over the plant to stimulate the production of more rhizomes, and therefore, more potatoes. I’ve seen some plants grow in hills over 4 feet high, but there is a remarkable variety of height and width between cultivars.

An Early Season Grower

Spuds grow when the soil is cool. When the soil warms, the tops die, signaling harvest time. When this happens, it’s time to get dirty and dig out the Irish nuggets of goodness. There are even ways to grow this vegetable so you won’t have dirt caked all over your harvest.

Dirt Free Growing

Instead of soil, straw can be piled around the growing stems. The rhizomes will grow out into the looser, cleaner, material in a more uniform manner and at harvest won’t pack grit underneath your fingernails. I’ve even heard of people growing potatoes in inverted bottomless plastic pots and periodically filling them with sawdust as the plants grow upward.

Generally, the best kind of fertilizer to apply to potatoes has a 1:2:2 ratio like 10-20-20 or 8-16-16. This would be a good fertilizer for irises, for example.

Different Potatoes, Different Preparations

My favorite potatoes for a variety of cooking methods are:

See you in the future with more helpful tips from GardenPower with Joe Sherinski and your local Servicing STIHL Dealer!

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