Growing your own potatoes at home in your backyard garden is very rewarding and the flavour from home grown potatoes will blow you away. A lot of people choose not to grow their own potatoes as they can buy them cheaper from the shop, which they are not wrong about, but with growing your own potatoes at home you have a choice over the variety you plant and how you grow it.
There is no way in a garden of our size that we can grow enough potatoes to last us a year, but I would say we grow enough to last us close to 9 months of the year. Our favourite varieties to grow are Dellaware, Mozart, Nicola and Ruby Lou. We have found all these varieties are great producers and grow without any problems. We grow with seed potatoes, store bought sprouted potatoes and potatoes saved from our own stash.
When to Plant Your Potatoes
Potatoes can be planted once the weather starts to cool down, so we generally plant our potatoes in April and then replant a second crop in September. Its best to plant your potato tubers when the soil temperatures are between 10 to 30 degrees Celsius. We have tried growing them over the heat of our summer but found we had a very small harvest and large problem with diseases.
Where to Plant Your Potatoes
Potatoes like to be planted in full sun, which is at least 6 hours of direct sunlight a day. However, are back garden beds, which in winter when the sun drops low only gets a couple hours of direct sunlight, our potatoes still grow well, they just take longer to grow.
How to Plant Your Potatoes
Potatoes can be grown in the ground, pot, bag or raised garden bed with great success. Before planting our potatoes, we like to add blood and bone, slow release organic fertilser, compost and manure. We then use a rake to make a small furrow about 10cm deep and about 50cm apart. We then plant our potatoes about 40cm apart.
We used to plant our potatoes closer together, but I have found the harvest yields to be higher with the distance further apart. We also do not cut our potatoes, like others recommend as we have found a reduce in harvest and a higher chance of a rotten tuber.
How to Care for Your Potatoes
Once your potatoes have emerged from the ground and are about 10cm tall, you will need to cover your potatoes with either soil, compost or mulch. We use mulch and have found we have had better results with this. For the mulch we have used green waste mulch from our local tip, hay loaded with guinea pig poo and bought hay. The potatoes will shoot out through this again and we will cover it once more.
We add more organic slow release fertilser after they have been in the ground for 3 months. Once the plants are 3–4-month-old, start looking to see if you can see any potatoes uncovered, if found cover them.
How Long Until I Can Harvest my Potatoes?
Potatoes take around 20 weeks until they are ready to harvest. We wait until the foliage starts dying back and then give them another week or two in the ground. We find its at this point when the potatoes put their size on.
How to Harvest my Potatoes
There are few ways to harvest your potatoes and a lot of this depends on what soil you grow in. In our sandy soils I dig them out by hand, this way we damaged no potatoes. You can use a fork to loosen the soil and lift the potatoes out. Any damaged potatoes should be eaten straight away.
Curing your Potatoes for Storage
The best way to cure your potatoes for storage is leave the dirt on them and leave them in the sun to dry for a couple of hours. Once this is done we wrap them in hessian and store them in a cool dark cupboard.
Common Problems with Growing Potatoes
We have had a few issues with growing potatoes, but mainly in the earlier days of being at our property as we were still learning how to grow here. The main issues we had here was root knot nematodes, slugs and snails. Here is how we control these issues as well as a few other issues you may come across on your potatoes.
Root Knot Nematodes
Root Knot Nematodes will cause the roots to have lumps and galls all over the roots and no or limited potatoes. The plant can also show signs of yellowing and stunted growth. There is no way to fix the crop once its planted and the damage is done, however you can prevent root knot nematodes by improving the soil and creating a healthy balance encouraging good nematodes to kill the root knot nematodes.
We did this by adding additionally a large amount of compost and manure. We watered this in with a seaweed tonic. By the next time we planted our next crop of potatoes, the root knot nematodes where gone. Its important to keep your soil health up otherwise they may return.
Slugs and Snails
By far the biggest issue we have in our garden are with snails and slugs. I have seen snails and slugs come out in force after rain and completely strip a potato plant in a night. We find the most effective method of controlling slugs and snails is to go out at night and remove them from the plant and then humanely kill them. Here is how we control our snails.
Aphids
These are small sap sucking insects which you will find around new shoots and undersides of leaves. It causes the plant to wilt and discoloured as the aphids suck the nutrients out of the plant. To control you can squish them with your fingers, wash them off with a hose or spray them with a potassium soap spray or horticultural oil.
Early Blight
Early Blight is a fungal disease that is found on the leaves and stems. It will show up as black or brown spot on the leaves or stems and is spread by rain, wind and insects. It can be very hard to control and will affect productivity of the plants. You can try spray a organic fungicide and prevent it by practicing crop rotation, planting seed potatoes or plant early blight resistant potatoes like Nicola.
Potato Scab
When you go to pick your potatoes, their skins will be rough, scabby and have brown indents. This disease can be a bacteria or fungi that causes this. To prevent use seed certified potatoes and practice good crop rotation. Always amend the soil after you have had potato scab so the soil life can repair the soil.