While backyard gardening has many highlights, perhaps one of the most enjoyable and fruitful components of most backyard gardens is planting and successfully growing potatoes. Potatoes are relatively easy to cultivate, and with just a few simple steps, growing a crop of Russets or Yukon Golds can lead to a year-long bounty of this tuber. The specific steps in planting and growing potatoes in a backyard garden are preparing the soil, choosing a variety, planting the potatoes, maintaining the plants, and harvesting the crop.
TO prepare the soil for potato planting, it is best to begin in the fall. Late in the fall, it is important to amend, or add to, the soil so that when planting potatoes in the spring, the soil has all the nutrients it needs to feed the growing plants. Amending the soil consists of raking or digging into the soil and adding straw, cow or horse manure, peat moss, or other natural or chemical components to it. It is imperative to work these amendment materials into the soil well, just like mixing a cake batter. All the ‘ingredients’ need to be well-mixed. During the late fall, winter, and early spring, these amendments break down into their component parts and by the time planting comes around, the soil is fertile for growing.
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When it is time to plant the potatoes, choosing the right variety is important. There are two important factors to consider when choosing a potato variety or varieties to plant: personal preference and growing location. Personal preference will dictate whether mashing potatoes, new potatoes, red potatoes, or other potatoes are grown. If the potatoes will be eater right away, one variety of potato can be grown; if they will be stored for a long period of time, another variety can be chosen. Also, depending upon the climate where the potatoes will be grown, different varieties will be chosen according to growing conditions needed.
When the soil is warm enough to plant, it needs to be raked or dug into again, softening it up so that as the potato plant grows, the tubers, or potatoes, which grow under the ground will be full and well-shaped. Hard soil will cause deformed potatoes. Once the soil is worked, planting can begin. Potatoes are not planted with seeds, but with pieces of other potatoes. In the location where a white sprout comes out of a potato, this is called an ‘eye.’ Potatoes are cut into chunks with one to three ‘eyes’ or sprouts in each chunk. This chunk is what is planted in the ground. Some people treat the chunk with an anti-fungal powder before planting, others do not. The chunks, or eyes, are placed in a shallow hole, perhaps three to five inches deep. Then, a mound of soil is placed on top of them. Finally, the mound is covered with straw or newspaper. This is to keep the potato eyes warm and also to prevent the growing tubers from becoming sunburned once they begin developing.
The potato plant will need regular watering and fertilizer in order to produce the best potatoes. However, if the potato plant is too happy and well cared for, especially with lots of nitrogen, it will grow into a lush green plant with seed pods rather than producing potatoes. The mixture of fertilizer will need to have equal amounts of magnesium, nitrogen, and potassium in order to grow the best tubers. Once the potato plant blooms, tubers will begin to form underground.
Once the tubers are three or more inches across, they can be harvested as new potatoes, or they can be left to grow into larger potatoes. Simply reaching under the loose soil around the potato plant will likely yield a handful of potatoes. Some people wait until fall to harvest the potatoes, when they remove the plant and dig all of the potatoes in the mound with a potato fork.
