Tradition says that you're supposed to plant your potatoes around the the
middle of March, around St. Patrick's Day, but the truth is that you can plant
potatoes all throughout the spring and still get a crop. I've even planted
potatoes as late as early June. There are a lot of different ways to produce them, to grow
them. Some people will grow them in tubs that they can just dump the soil out of.
Some people will grow them in buckets; others will make raised beds that they
dissemble or dig into and harvest the potatoes. Then the
old-fashioned way is to plant them straight into the soil, into beds. It's
not really difficult to grow potatoes; it's actually quite easy and it's fun,
because it's always like a treasure hunt when you dig them up in the fall time, at
harvest time. But there are some basics that you need to provide for the potato,
just like any other plant. It needs good soil fertility, and potatoes require a
little bit of acidic soil rather than neutral soil. You want the soil pH to be
anywhere from about five and a half to six and a half, not lower than five and a
half, though it's a little too acidic and not above six and a half and you'll have
you a good crop of potatoes. You want to provide good weed control for them; you
want to mulch them provide good moisture for them throughout the season; and then
pest control. Everybody's heard of what a potato bug is and they're a pesky little
critter that'll eat the leaves right off the potato during the season. If your
soil pH is not in that slightly acidic range, there's some things you can
do to drop the pH on the soil. You can add peat moss to it and/or other organic
matter; put compost in it; urea compost is a good way to lower your pH if
you need to lower it. Sulfur, elemental sulfur, which is a organic chemical that
you can buy and mix in with the soil. That's sometimes a little slow release,
so don't expect to apply it and have it help your plants right away. A lot of
times you have to apply that in the fall time for for it to assist your plants in
the springtime. I've got Yukon Gold, which is a very popular variety. It's actually my
favorite. It's a it's got a white flesh in it, or yellowish white flesh in it -- it's a
very good all-purpose potato. And then the
Pontiac red is probably one of the most popular red skinedn potatoes on the market.
And potatoes are grown from vegetative propagation. There are such a thing is
called true seeds for potato plants, and a lot of people don't realize that
potato plant will make a flower and it makes a tiny little berry about the size
of a quarter that will produce seeds inside of it, and those seeds can be
planted.
They cross so readily that you don't often get the same plant or a same
crop that you expected and so most people will plant their potatoes from
other seed potatoes. This is actually the little plant, the stalk of the plant
beginning to form, with the little roots at the base ,but you don't have to have
these eyes on the potato for it to be a potato that can plant and produce. You
can plant a bare-skinned potato that's not showing any eyes in the ground and it
will eventually form those, but it's best if you have these eyes already developed.
You don't have to have plant the entire potato; you can divide this in half and
have two plants then, and you'll increase your yield by by doing that. Always try
to make sure you've got multiple eyes on the same potato. See, that's a little eye
growing right there, and you know it doesn't have to be fully formed like
that one is, even that little spot right there is where a plant a part of that
stalk is going to come out. So you want to place them in the ground about with
about two inches of soil over the top. So I'm putting them right down the center
of the row. You want your plants spaced approximately 24 inches apart 18 to 24
inches apart, that's how I like it. Some people put them closer than that.
Now potatoes do require hilling, and that's a technique where when the potato
gets about eight to ten inches tall you will want to loosen the soil on both
sides of your of your bed again, maybe till it on both sides of the bed, and
then take that loose soil and the plant will be about that tall and you want to
heap the soil up on both sides of the plant, all the way up to where there's
just a little bit of a leaf stalk above the soil. So actually cover the lower
leaves and the base of the plant entirely with soil. You'll do that twice
in the growing season. When they get about eight to ten inches tall and the
spring, you'll you'll hill them once, and I like to hill them one more time and
usually that's around June for me, when again that grow about another 8 inches
or so above that that last time that you mounded them. You'll harvest your
potatoes when the plants have died back completely. You certainly can dig them
prior to that, you'll just have smaller potatoes at that stage.
hey everyone this is Shannie from Baker Creek. Thanks so much for watching this
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