Growing Potatoes for Self Sufficieny
I can remember my grandparents growing rows of potatoes in their garden every year. My parents grew potatoes as well when I was small. We never bought potatoes until we moved to town when I was a teenager. Our favorite variety was Kennebec, and I still grow them today. Potatoes are durable, cold hardy, nutritious and keep well in storage. If you have ever considered growing potatoes, and have an extra row or two in your garden, give it a try. They are easy to grow, and will reward your efforts with loads of home grown potatoes. Growing Potatoes - Planting and CarePlanting potatoes is done in the early spring, but because they take a while to mature, you won't harvest them until the summer. Depending on the variety you decide to plant it can take from 2-4 months from planting to harvest. Traditional potato planting time here in Southern Indiana is around St. Patrick's Day (March 17th), which is around a month before the average last frost date. Potatoes will not begin to grow until the soil temperature reaches 45°F. Potatoes do best in light sandy soil. They grow better in this type of soil, and it also makes digging them infinitely easier than heavy clay soil.Potato plants are grown from "seed" potatoes that can be purchased from local nurseries and seed sellers, as well as from seed catalogs. These are potatoes produced and treated especially for growing more potatoes. Commercially grown seed potatoes are treated with fungicide,and cut into pieces. Each piece of seed potato should have at least one eye on it. The eye is where the new plant sprouts from, so no eye means no plant. The seed potato provides nutrients for the new plant until it gets fully established.  Plant potatoes in a low hilled row about 12-16 inches wide by 4 inches high. Dig a trench about 4 inches deep and wide right down the center of the hill. Place your seed potatoes about 8-12 inches apart, with cut portion down. Cover the seed potatoes with about 2 inches of soil. This will leave a trench about 2 inches deep down the middle of the hilled row. Once the potatoes start to grow and reach about 4 inches high, replace the remaining 2 inches of soil to fill the trench level. After potato plants are about 8 inches high, begin to hill up the soil around them. Hill the soil up so that only an 3 to 4 inches of the plant is left above the soil. New potatoes will grow on roots in or just below this hilled soil. IF you don't hill the soil up, potatoes forming close to the surface may turn green from sunlight. Growing Potatoes - When to Harvest and HowWhen potato plants reach mature size, they will begin bloom. Not long after that, the potato plants will begin to die back. This is early to mid July in my area. Once the plants have died back, give them a couple more weeks for the potatoes to mature to fullest size. Harvesting potatoes is a fairly simple thing although it requires a bit of physical labor. The best tool to use is a potato fork, which is not the same as a pitch or hay fork. Potato forks have tines that are about 3/4 inch wide, and the entire 4 tined tool is only about a foot wide. Step the fork into the soil about a foot or more away from the base of the potato plant, and rock the handle back towards the ground, until the plant comes up with the soil. You may have to repeat the process on the other side of the plant. If your soil is sandy and loose the potatoes should just fall away from the soil, and are easily picked up at that time. In a good year, you can expect to harvest around 40-50 pounds of potatoes from a 30 foot row. Growing Potatoes - StorageCellaring or Cold Storage - Potatoes are best kept in a cool dark place. A basement or root cellar is the best option, but a cool room will work as well. I keep our potatoes and sweet potatoes in covered bushel baskets in a room on our basement that always seems to be cooler than the rest of the house. Potatoes kept cool, dark and dry will keep into the winter and early spring. They will become somewhat soft as they slowly loose moisture during the winter. Soft potatoes are still good to eat, as long as they don't turn dark on the inside. Check through your potatoes occasionally to make sure that none are going bad. Discard or use any that are beginning to go bad. Left over potatoes can be used for seed the following year. Canning Potatoes - Storing Potatoes can be accomplished by canning them as well. Because potatoes are low in acid you have to use the pressure canning method. Start by washing and peeling your potatoes. Cut larger potatoes into quarters. Cover potatoes with water in a stew pot and boil for 10 minutes then drain. Pack hot potatoes into sterilized jars. Add salt 1/2 tsp per pint, 1 tsp per quart. Ladle boiling water over them, leaving 1 inch of headspace. Process at 10PSI, pints for 35 minutes and quarts for 40 minutes. Canned potatoes will keep for years on the shelf if they are stored out of direct sunlight. Growing Potatoes - Pests  Here is a link that gives more information on Colorado Potato Beetles and other insect pests of potatoes:
Growing potatoes can be a great way to improve your food self sufficiency. Although potatoes can be purchased fairly inexpensively, it's still a good idea to know how to grow your own. Every single food skill you can learn gives you that much more control over your own destiny. There are hundreds if not thousands of varieties of potatoes available for cultivation, of different colors, sizes, and flavors, that you will never have the opportunity to taste unless you grow them yourselves. Return to Vegetable Gardening from Growing Potatoes page |
Growing potatoes has been going on for at least three thousand years. Potatoes were first grown by the Inca an Maya civilizations in South and Central America. European explorers introduced them to their home countries, and they then came back to the Americas during colonization. They have been a staple crop ever since.