Showing posts with label root vegetables. Show all posts
Showing posts with label root vegetables. Show all posts

Thursday, April 5, 2012

How to Plant Potatoes in your Home Garden

Have you ever grown potatoes in your home garden? If you have a sunny spot and a few feet of space, they're really easy to grow! Today I planted the first of the seed potatoes in my garden, & I'll show you how to plant them in yours too.

A few facts about potatoes:
  • The potatoes you order and plant (or save and then plant) are called seed potatoes
  • Potato plants get to be about 12-16 inches high!
  • Potato plants will have pretty flowers on the top 
  • Correct spacing for potatoes is 1 per 12", with 12" between rows


Step 1:
Dig a 3-4" deep trench across the length of your bed. If you're planting in a 4'x8', you could have 4 trenches  8 feet long.














Step 2:
Place potatoes in trench, 12' apart. You want to place the eye of the potato up towards the sky.














Step 3:
Cover the potatoes with 1-2 inches of soil. In several weeks, they'll start to push out of the ground with little buds.

First Potato plant leaves


Step 4: As the plants grow, you can level out the soil. Once potato plants get to be 5-6" tall, you can begin to mound up the soil at the base of each plant, to give your potatoes more space to grow!

Good luck with your potato growing! :)








Mature potato plant- pretty, right?