Planting 30 Pounds of Potatoes

We planted our remaining 30 pounds of seed potatoes on Monday of this week (April 27th).

Funny story - I had placed my order for potatoes in January.  It had not arrived by the first week in April so I decided to purchase some locally.  My husband Michael said "Laura, you realize your order is bound to arrive this week after you buy all these new spuds."

Sure enough, my order arrived the VERY next day.  Thus, we planted an incredibly large amount of potatoes for our 2021 harvest.

This brings us to planting!  We planted 2 varieties a few weeks ago but had not had the time to plant the remaining potatoes until yesterday.  After considering our options I decided it would be best to plant them in the middle of what will eventually be our pumpkin patch.  Potatoes will be ready early - mid August so after they are dug, the pumpkins can fill in as they finish growing.

Some Yukon Gold potatoes from a harvest in 2020.

When planting potatoes, you want to cut the seed potatoes up ahead of time.  If we know exactly what day we will be planting, I will cut them the day before, otherwise I have also cut them a few hours ahead of time and the spuds have grown great.  We cut them into small chunks, each with at least one "eye" on them.  The eye is where you'll see sprouts coming out of older potatoes.  Often, in seed potatoes you'll already see some evidence of stems starting so they are generally pretty easy to find.

Six varieties of potatoes went in the ground on Monday!

We have personally never used grow bags, but they are a great option if you don't have much space in your garden, or if you want to ensure you'll find all the potatoes when harvesting.

When digging in the ground, we like to use a trench method.  We dig a long trench about 6 inches deep and place potatoes about every 10 inches.  When covering them we want to make sure that there aren't any clods of dirt right over the potato so the plant can grow straight up.

Our very first potato harvest during our first full year on the farm in 2019!

The potatoes also will need space to expand and grow; often the resulting underground veggies will grow within a fairly wide radius (6-12 inches) of the original seed potato.  Ample space is essential for a good yield.

Comment below - what is your favorite way to use homegrown potatoes?