Gardening at Home: Growing Your Own Potatoes

Potatoes are an invisible crop. Since potatoes are tubers that grow underground you don't really know just how good you're doing until harvest. And at that point of the gardening process, if you haven't done it right, it's just too late.

The only part of the potato plant are the potatoes themselves. Any green part of the plant, including green sections of the potato skins, contain arsenic and should never be eaten by anyone.

While potatoes are generally fairly affordable to purchase many folks are now turning to gardening their own food to be sure that the food is as free of pesticides, and fully ripened, as possible.

The most common varieties of potato that you'll see in stores are the baking potatoes and the red potato. In spite of this there are several hundred varieties of potatoes in the world today. Each variety of potato has a texture, and even a flavor, of it's own.

How long does it take to raise potatoes?

From the time you plant your seed potatoes it's between two to four months to harvest fully grown potatoes. What you plant when starting your seed potatoes aren't really seeds at all. Seed potatoes are merely potatoes that have been allowed to start growing shoots from the "eyes" of the potato.

Some people, in an effort to get as many starts as possible, will gut a potato into several smaller chunks, soak them in water until the shoots form, and then plant those. This does work well, and if you're wanting a high number of plants from the least number of potatoes, it's a good way to start.

How do I plant my seed potatoes?

Potatoes aren't know for doing all too well in too rich of soil. Some humus, and a good Ph balance (5.0 to 5.5) will do the trick for your potato plants to start in. Bury your seed potatoes about four to six inches down and cover them well.

Give your potato plants a good three square feet per plant and do as little walking immediately around the plant, to prevent making the ground too hard for potatoes to form.

Water your potatoes about one inch of water per week during the dry season. Keeping the soil too wet leaves the roots prone to disease and fungi. Pull any weeds that start near your plants and hoe or till lightly since your crop is under the surface of the soil. The last thing you want to do is to damage the roots before harvest time.

How can I maximize my crop?

When your potato plants are a foot tall, start mounding the soil up around the plant, to the bottom-most sets of leaves. Throughout the growing season, keep the soil mounded up around the plant loosely, to allow the maximum number of potatoes to form and for the maximum growing room for your potatoes themselves.

It's also very good for your potato crop to have plenty of earthworms in the soil around your plants. They help to keep the soil looser. Using too much fertilizer will result in hollow blackened potatoes.

When can I start to harvest?

In about six to eight weeks, you can start harvest some of the immature potatoes for what's called "new potatoes." Just be careful not to remove any potatoes that are green. Green potatoes are usually near the surface of the soil and have turned green from exposure to sunlight. Re-bury these and cover them with thick layers of soil or straw. Watch carefully while you dig around and only take the tubers that are the right color.

Wash your potatoes very well to prevent food-borne illness.

If you let the potatoes form underground the full four months you'll soon get to enjoy those beautiful, big potatoes that are great for baking, home fries, or for trading with your fellow gardeners, for their crop. Store your potatoes away from sunlight.

One more note about potatoes

Occasionally, small red fruits will develop on the potato. These are not the result of cross-pollination with tomatoes and are not edible. Though these fruit do contain seed it's pretty inefficient to start from these seeds.

Sources:

Personal Experience
Wikipedia
www.About.com