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How to Grow Organic Potatoes in Your Garden

There is nothing better than a perfectly-boiled new potato, lightly buttered and salted. Although a perfectly baked russet runs a close second. If you’ve been accustomed to purchasing potatoes from the grocery store, chances are that you’ve only tasted a few common varieties. When you grow your own, there is a whole world of flavors, colors, shapes, and sizes open to you. You can grow all the new potatoes you could possibly ask for, or grow good keeping potatoes to store for the winter.

And the good news is that potatoes are really not much work for the gardener.

Site and Soil

Potatoes should be grown in an area that gets at least six hours of sun, in soil that is of average fertility and well-drained. Heavy clay soils make it difficult for full-size tubers to form. It should also be a spot in which you have not grown potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, or eggplants for the past two years, to prevent soil-borne diseases.

Planting

You’ll be planting early season varieties as soon as soil can be worked and when soil temperatures have reached 40 degrees Fahrenheit. Mid and late season varieties can be planted one to four weeks before your last spring frost.

You should only plant certified disease-free seed potatoes, which are available in garden centers, nurseries, and catalogs.

For an extra-early start on your early potatoes, you’ll want to “chit” them. This simply means laying your tubers, eye-side up, in a box in a cool, dry place for one to two weeks, until the eyes sprout.

You do not need to chit mid and late season potatoes; simply plant the tubers whenever you’re ready.

Small seed potatoes can be planted whole. Those larger than a chicken egg can be cut so that there are one to three eyes per piece (though you don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.) Just make sure that you let the cut seed potatoes sit out for at least 24 hours before planting so that the cut sides callous over and they don’t rot.

There are several methods for planting potatoes in your garden:

  • Planting in trenches: Dig a trench six to eight inches deep and place potatoes 12 inches apart. Cover with four inches of soil.
  • Planting in individual planting holes: Dig a hole six to eight inches deep and wide, place potato in the hole and cover with four inches of soil.
  • In containers such as barrels, trash cans, or wire enclosures. Place six inches of soil or potting mix in the bottom, place potatoes on top of soil, and cover with an additional four inches of soil.

Growing Potatoes

Growing potatoes is very simple. They require one inch of water per week, and if you’ve amended your aoil with compost, won’t require fertilizer. If you haven’t been amending the soil with compost or other organic matter, you can mix a balanced organic fertilizer into the soil at planting time, following the instructions on whichever product you decide to use.

In addition to keeping the area watered and weed free, you’ll need to hill your potatoes regularly. Hilling ensures that the forming tubers stay underground and don’t turn green (green potatoes are poisonous). When the foliage of your potatoes is 12 inches tall, add either soil or straw to the top of the trench or hole, leaving three to four inches of foliage exposed.

You’ll want to do this every couple of weeks, being sure to leave the top few inches of foliage exposed each time.

Pests and Diseases

Common pests and diseases for potatoes include:

  • Colorado Potato Beetle: handpick beetles, larvae, and eggs from plants
  • Flea beetles: keep the area weed-free so you don’t provide cover for flea beetles, spray with insecticidal soap
  • Leafhoppers: blast with water from the hose
  • Aphids: blast with water from the hose
  • Scab: crop rotation, plant resistant varieties (‘Norland’ ‘Chieftain,’ ‘Russet Burbank’)
  • Late Blight: crop rotation, clean up previous season’s foliage and tubers, plant resistant varieties (‘Sebago,’ ‘Elba,’ ‘Allegheny’)

If you have the pests mentioned above in your garden, it’s advisable to cover your potato patch with a floating row cover to avoid problems.

Harvesting

New potatoes can be dug any time during the season, as soon as you see blooms on the plants. If you are growing potatoes to store, you’ll want to let the foliage turn brown. Cut it back, then leave the potatoes in the ground for a few more weeks, being sure to harvest before you get a hard frost.

The best way to harvest potatoes is to use a digging fork, and start at the outer edge of the hill or trench. Try to get the fork as deep into the soil as possible, and lift to harvest the potatoes.

You can save seed potatoes from your garden from year to year. Simply save healthy tubers in a cool, dry spot. The good thing about this is that, over time, you end up with a strain of potatoes that is particularly suited to conditions in your garden.

To store potatoes, keep them in a cold but not freezing, dark spot with some humidity. Don’t wash them before storing, but let them sit out for a few days after harvesting so that any soil clinging to the tubers dries thoroughly.

One plant will typically yield between two and ten pounds of potatoes.

Varieties

Early Season (65 days until harvest):

  • Russet Norkotah
  • Red Norland
  • Yukon Gold
  • Adirondack Red
  • Adirondack Blue
  • Caribe
  • Early Rose

Midseason (80 days until harvest):

  • Kennebec
  • Idaho Russet
  • All Blue
  • Purple Viking
  • Austrian Crescent
  • Red Gold
  • Rose Finn Apple
  • French Fingerling
  • Yellow Finn

Late Season (90+ days until harvest):

  • German Butterball
  • Cowhorn
  • Carola
  • Sebago
  • Purple Peruvian
  • Katahdin
  • Elba
  • Green Mountain
  • Red Thumb
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