In This Post:
– How to grow potatoes
– Taking care of growing potatoes
– When to harvest
– How to harvest and store
Potatoes can be consumed in all forms: Boiled, mashed, hashed, grilled, fried and a lot more. Those who love potatoes can’t live without them. What if you come to know of ways to grow potatoes at home without spending a penny? Yes, you heard it right! In this blog, we will tell you how to plant potatoes at home.
So, without further ado, let’s get started.
Ways to Grow Potatoes at Home
From the new tender skinned potatoes, to the mature variety, potatoes are everyone’s favourite. You can toss the baby potatoes with their skin on in salads, bake them with a generous amount of cheese or simply make French fries. Not only children, but adults and senior citizens all love the humble vegetable – potatoes.
Would you like to grow these tubers at home and have a bite of the earthy potatoes straight from your home garden?
Let’s begin!
How to Grow Potatoes from Potatoes
Growing potatoes at home is a whole lot of fun. You can involve your kids as well. The first step in growing potatoes from scratch is to identify those potatoes that can sprout. You will see that some potatoes have a white mushy tuber developing from their eyes.
These are called seed potatoes. Ask your children to take a good look at your vegetable rack and separate the seed potatoes from the rest. Now, comes the second step of planting potatoes at home.
Growing potatoes from eyes
Potatoes prefer cool weather, so when the winters are just about to end and you can work through the soil, you can start sowing seed potatoes. Before you plant the seed potatoes, make sure the potatoes that have sprouted are kept in a dry spot first.
Let the tube form properly before you plant it in the soil. This way the potatoes would be of a bigger and better quality. Now, let us prepare the soil for potato planting.
Preparing the site for potato planting
To plant potatoes in your garden you need to first prep the soil. The soil perfect for growing potatoes at home is loose, airy and not water logged. You should create a trench where the seed potatoes will be sown. Make sure that the soil does not have high moisture content or your seed potatoes will start rotting before they start producing tubers.
Choose a location that gets the full sun i.e. for a good 6-7 hours of sunlight. Dig a trench about 8 inches deep and 6 inches wide and create rows which are 3 feet apart. Spread a good amount of homemade organic compost in the ground and then place the potatoes in them.
Hilling potatoes
As a potato plant grows, it grows a main stem which has leaves and after a few days it also flowers above the ground. This is a sign that tells you that underground, the tubers produce secondary stems that branch out to form more tubers from the main stem.
To help produce more potatoes from potato eyes, and to keep them protected from sunlight, a few inches of soil is dug up from the surrounding area and hilled up around the base of the stem. In a season, you have to perform this task approximately 3-4 times.
It is advised to start preparing the hill during the morning. Avoid doing it during the heat of the day. Maintain even moisture in the soil to help potato plants flourish. When the potato plants are in full bloom and they are flowering, you should hill the potatoes to get a healthy harvest.
How to Take Care of Growing Potatoes
One of the most important parts of growing potatoes at home is to not let them be exposed in direct sunlight for a long period or else the tubers would turn green in colour and become toxic.
To address this issue, it is extremely important to use the hilling technique once you have sown the seed potatoes. We will further explain about the hilling process.
Pests and diseases
To protect the potatoes from pests and diseases it is important to take a few precautionary measures before sowing seed potatoes. Potato Scab is a disease caused by a high level of PH in the soil. Potatoes like acidic soil so it is not recommended to sow seed potatoes in a soil which has a pH higher than 5.2.
Another important point to remember is to dust the seed potatoes with sulfur before planting them. Colorado potato beetles, aphids and fleas are also a big threat to the potato crop. But you can always use a good pesticide to get rid of these unwanted guests.
When to Harvest Potatoes
Another important step in having your own potato patch at home is to know when to harvest potatoes.
New potatoes
If you want to get the new potatoes from your potato crop, then harvest the potatoes 2-3 weeks after the crop stops flowering. You will get potatoes with a tender skin, which you can easily scrape off. They taste much better than the mature potatoes. A drawback of new potatoes is that you can’t store them for long. You must consume them as soon as they are harvested.
Mature/old potatoes
If you want to get mature potatoes, then wait for 2-3 weeks after the plant’s leaves have died. Remember, the leaves above the ground should completely die before you start harvesting the mature potatoes. Cut the brown foliage to the ground and wait another 10-14 days before you begin harvesting the potatoes. This will help the potato skin to tough up and become mature. But be extra cautious as you can’t wait any longer than this or the potatoes would start rotting in the moisture-laden soil.
You can dig up the first batch of potatoes to test whether the skin of the potatoes is mature enough or not. If you start digging all the potatoes at once without doing the test run then you might not get the desired result.
How to Harvest and Store Potatoes
Dig the potatoes on a non-rainy dry day to avoid potatoes from rotting. Also, make sure there is not much direct sunlight as it can cause selonin to develop in the tubers, which is poisonous. Once you have dug up the potatoes, don’t leave them out in the sun for long as it will make the potato turn green and can cause selonin to poison it.
An important point to note before storing potatoes at home is to keep them in a cool, dry place for two weeks. This will cure them and the skin will toughen up more. It will be easier to store the potatoes at home. Once the potatoes are cured, brush away any soil clinging to its skin and store them in a cool, dry place where there is good ventilation.
Never store potatoes in a refrigerator and don’t wash any potatoes unless you want to use them. Any moisture in the potato rack can shorten up its storage life.
So, these were some of the best ways to grow potatoes at home. Some of the benefits of home-grown potatoes is that you can get it fresh without the harmful insecticides sprayed on it. You can also take a look at the fruits and vegetables that you can easily grow in your garden in spring season.
If you don’t have enough space, then try your gardening skills at a kitchen garden on your balcony.
You can also make your own organic compost from kitchen waste, including fruit and vegetable peels and rinds. For more updates, stay tuned to the best lifestyle blog in Pakistan. Don’t forget to write to us at blog@zameen.com and we will surely get back to you. Subscribe to the Zameen Newsletter appearing on the right hand side of the page.
