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?

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