It is springtime, which means gardening season has officially begun and potatoes are ready to be grown. Last year I grew my potatoes in 5-Gallon buckets and frankly it worked awesome. However, I am changing up my garden this year and watching a lot of gardening videos through Epic Gardening (SNTD loves you, Kevin) and I decided to try growing potatoes directly in the ground instead.
This will be my first year of growing potatoes in the ground; however, it doesn’t really seem that different or hard but there is the benefit that ALLEGEDLY potatoes grow best in the ground (continued nutrients and better drainage, allegedly).
Lets get into it.
Generic potato info
Using potting mix or a sandy soil is best for potatoes, so they don’t start to rot. Potatoes are “tubers“, which basically means they grow off the roots of the potato plants. Since they are underground, making sure they aren’t constantly soaked is always good.
Also, sprouted potatoes are easy to come by! Store-bought potatoes left in the pantry too long, will start to grow “eyes”. That is your potato sprouting and they can be used to grow a potato plant.
I had 3 potatoes that sprouted in my pantry this spring with a bunch of different eyes growing on them. Instead of just planting 3 potatoes, I cut them into smaller sections all with “eyes” on them. Before planting I let them sit out on a plate so the cut edges could dry up a bit and make them less prone to rotting.
how-to
When to plant potatoes: 2-4 weeks before your last frost, in spring. I live in Maine, so I planted mine in the end of April/beginning of May (if you are planting a little later, that is fine they just don’t love extreme heat).
This is a fairly simple process if you already have an existing garden bed with good soil:
- Dig a trench a couple inches deep in the garden bed
- Add the sprouted potatoes into the trench, 1 ft apart
- Spaces trenches 1-2 ft apart
- Cover the trench in soil, making a 2-3 inch “hill” above the potato trench with the soil
- Ideally the potatoes are 6-8 inches underground
- Let your potatoes grow for the soil until they are ready to harvest
- You can tell when the potatoes are done, because the foliage dies back! This will take about 10-14 weeks depending on the type of potato.
- For harvesting: use a spade shovel and gently loosen up the dirt surrounding your potato plant so you can pull the plant out of the ground. Make sure your soil is loose enough because the potatoes grow on the roots (tubers) and ideally you are able to get all of your harvest!
If I have any big failures or lessons learned from planting my potatoes directly into the garden I will keep ya’ll updated; however, I think this will work out awesome.
Till next time!
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