Growing Potatoes

Planting, Growing, and Harvesting Potatoes

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Wondering how to grow potatoes? We’re here to help! The taste and the texture of homegrown potatoes are far superior to those of store-bought spuds, especially the early varieties. Here’s how to plant, grow, and harvest potatoes in your garden.

About Potatoes

“What I say is that if a man really likes potatoes, he must be a pretty decent sort of fellow.”
–A. A. Milne, English writer (1882–1956)

Potatoes like cool weather and well-drained, loose soil that is about 45 to 55°F (7 to 13°C). In warmer climates, potatoes can be grown as a winter crop.

Folklore offers many “best days” for planting potatoes:

Old-timers in New England planted their potato crops when they saw dandelions blooming in the open fields.
The Pennsylvania Dutch considered St. Gertrude’s Day (March 17, aka St. Patrick’s Day) to be their official potato-planting day.
Many Christians believed that Good Friday is the best day to plant potatoes because the devil holds no power over them at this time.

All of these “best days” suggest an early spring planting! (See more about planting below.)

Planting

When to Plant Potatoes

Potatoes can be started 0 to 2 weeks after last spring frost. You may plant earlier, as soon as soil can be worked, but be aware that some crops may be ruined by a frost or wet soil. Find your local frost dates here.
However, if have a “late” spring, it’s not too late to plant potatoes through April (depending on where you’re located). Some folks even plant through June, especially in containers or potato towers.

How to Plant Potatoes

With a hoe or round-point shovel, dig a trench about 6 inches wide and 8 inches deep, tapering the bottom to about 3 inches wide.
Potatoes are best grown in rows. Space rows about 3 feet apart.
Spread and mix in rotted manure or organic compost in the bottom of the trench before planting. (Learn more about soil amendments and preparing soil for planting.)
In the trench, place a seed potato piece, cut side down, every 12 to 14 inches and cover with 3 to 4 inches of soil.
The best starters are seed potatoes from which eyes (buds) protrude. (Do not confuse seed potatoes with potato seeds or grocery produce.) Use a clean, sharp paring knife to cut large potatoes into pieces that are roughly the size of a golf ball, making sure that there are at least 2 eyes on each piece. (Potatoes that are smaller than a hen’s egg should be planted whole.)
If you are cutting up potato pieces for planting, do so 1 to 2 days ahead of planting. This will give them the chance to “heal” and form a protective layer over the cut surface, improving both moisture retention and rot resistance.
12 to 16 days after planting, when sprouts appear, use a hoe to gently fill in the trench with another 3 to 4 inches of soil, leaving a few inches of the plants exposed. Repeat in several weeks, leaving the soil mounded up 4 to 5 inches above ground level (this is called “hilling”).
After the potato plants have emerged, add organic mulch between the rows to conserve moisture, help with weed control, and cool the soil.

Care

How to Grow Potatoes

Do not allow sunlight to fall on the tubers, which develop under the surface of the soil, or they will turn green.
Do the hilling in the morning, when plants are at their tallest. During the heat of the day, plants start drooping.
Maintain even moisture, especially from the time when sprouts appear until several weeks after they blossom. The plants need 1 to 2 inches of water per week. If you water too much right after planting and not enough as the potatoes begin to form, the tubers can become misshapen.
The last hilling should be done before the potato plants bloom, when the plant is about 6 inches tall. Hoe the dirt up around the base of the plant in order to cover the tubers as well as to support the plant.
Hilling keeps the potatoes from getting sunburned, which can cause them to turn green and produce a chemical called solanine. Solanine gives off a bitter taste and is toxic.

Pests/Diseases

Potato Scab: Most likely caused by a high soil pH. Remember: Potatoes like acidic soil (do not plant in soil with a pH higher than 5.2). Dust seed potatoes with sulfur before planting. Some readers suggest adding pine straw on top of the potatoes when planting for natural anti-bacterial elements.
Colorado potato beetles need to be hand-picked and predatory birds will often eat them. While they’re in the nymph state, they can be controlled with Diatomaceous Earth (food grade) which is a non-toxic way to control pests in the garden. If they continue to be a problem, a few sprays of Spinosad, an organic pesticide, will get rid of the beetles. Always use products at dawn or dusk to avoid harming beneficial insects.
Aphids
Flea Beetles
Early/Late Blight

Harvest/Storage

How to Harvest Potatoes

“New potatoes,” which are potatoes that are purposefully harvested early for their smaller size and tender skin, will be ready for harvest 2 to 3 weeks after the plants stop flowering. For mature potatoes, wait 2 to 3 weeks after the foliage has died.
New potatoes should not be cured and should be eaten within a few days of harvest, as they will not keep for much longer.
Dig potatoes on a dry day. Dig up gently, being careful not to puncture the tubers. Avoid cutting or bruising potato skin. The soil should not be compact, so digging should be easy.
If the soil is very wet, let the potatoes air-dry as much as possible before putting them in bags or baskets.
For the biggest and best potatoes, harvest only after the plant’s foliage has died back.
Cut browning foliage to the ground and wait 10 to 14 days before harvesting to allow the potatoes to develop a thick enough skin. Don’t wait too long, though, or the potatoes may rot.
Allow freshly dug potatoes to sit in a dry, cool place (45–60°F/7–15°C) for up to two weeks. This allows their skins to cure, which will help them keep for longer.
After curing, make sure you brush off any soil clinging to the potatoes, then store them in a cool, somewhat humid, dark place. The ideal temperature for storage is 38 to 40°F (3 to 4°C).
Do not store potatoes with apples; the apples’ ethylene gas will cause potatoes to spoil.
Never store potatoes in the refrigerator.
Whether you dig your own potatoes or buy them at a store, don’t wash them until right before you use them. Washing potatoes shortens their storage life.
Find more tips on getting potatoes ready for the root cellar.

Potatoes
The fruit (metaphorically speaking) of a very happy potato plant!

Recommended Varieties

There are more than 100 varieties of potatoes. Tan-skinned and red-skinned varieties with white flesh are the most common in home gardens.

Early Varieties:

‘Irish Cobbler’: tan skin, irregular shape
‘Norland’: red skin, resistant to potato scab
‘Mountain Rose’: red skin and pink flesh, resistant to some viruses

Mid-Season Varieties

‘Red Pontiac’: red skin, deep eyes
‘Viking’: red skin, very productive
‘Chieftan’: red skin, resistant to potato scab, stores well

Late Varieties

‘Katahdin’: tan skin, resistant to some viruses
‘Kennebec’: tan skin, resistant to some viruses and late blight
‘Elba’: tan skin, large round tubers, resistant to blight and potato scab

Blue Potatoes?

We also love All Blue Potatoes! They’re delicious and, well, they’re truly blue!

See our page on how to choose the best potatoes to grow in your garden for more info!

Wit & Wisdom

If your garden soil is very rocky, put the seed potato pieces directly on the ground. Sprinkle with a mix of soil and compost. Cover them with straw or leaves, hilling the material up as the potatoes grow.
Practice yearly crop rotation.
See our video on how to grow potatoes in a trash can, the easiest-ever container garden!
Before planning your garden, take a look at our plant companions chart to see which veggies are most compatible with potatoes.
Did you know: Potato promoter Antoine Parmentier convinced Marie Antoinette to wear potato blossoms in her hair.
Grated potatoes are said to soothe sunburnt skin.

Recipes

Cooking Notes

Check out our recipe archives to find potato recipes that range from plain to fancy!

Reader Comments

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Irish Potato

I like the piece. I would also want to know how to control the pest. I am based in Nigeria

Row width

How wide should rows be ? I will be planting Irish Cobblers in the next week or so.
I am from Guelph Ontario.

Potatoes

I have grown, from eyes from potatoes, peelings really. I have grown successfully in bags previously....but I put them in the ground this time (built up from compost ) they grew tall...and when I dug them up the had brown blisters more or less all over them, but I peeled them and the inside is beautifully creamy white, and no blemishes, are they safe to eat?
Kind regards, dorothy

Potato harvest

Hi, Dorothy, It sounds like your potatoes have some kind of scab—there are numerous ones related to spuds. It may have been that the pH of your compost was not suitable. Do a pH/soil test to determine it. See this page for recommended pH: http://www.almanac.com/content/ph-preferences Note that pH is only one possible cause.

In the meantime, your potatoes—once peeled—should be perfectly fine to eat. Congratulations on a successful harvest!

Potato Farming

Farming process, diseases, fertiliser and harvesting

Dusting Potatoes

This was my first year growing potatoes. I had a good crop but they had scab on them. Should I have dusted them with sulfur and is an acidifier for blueberries the same thing and can I use that? Thank you.

potato scab

If you’ve had potato scab before, check the pH of your soil and adjust it to 5.2 or a bit lower, down to about 4.8. To do this, you can add sulfur. You can also dip the cut seed potatoes in sulfur before planting, to help deter disease, including scab. As for using a soil acidifier for blueberries – that plant likes the pH in about the same range. If your product is basically elemental sulfur, without other additives focused on blueberry growth, then it should be fine to use.

Potatoes Left Behind

Last fall I apparently missed some russets when digging up my crop and they replanted themselves. This spring I did use left over tubers from last year to plant my new crop (which I know is not advised). When I recently dug up this year's crop, to my surprise, the plants that grew from the potatoes I missed last year were much more productive than the ones I purposely planted. Why would this be? Is it that they simply got a head start?

The usual approach to

The usual approach to ‘volunteers’ is to dig them up because they get blight and the last thing you want is disease. But it’s up to you. If the potatoes seem good, just look at them closely and make a call. Most volunteers are poor. It’s all experimentation!

spuds

to allow you paid volunteers to flourish within you properly you have to provide them witha moist base lubrication

Potatoes

Hello I have been growing potatoes and I have noticed some small round green things that look like tomatoes just a bit harder I was wondering if you can tell me what they are please ?

small round green things . . .

Hi, Thomas, The small round green things on the potato plants … are potato fruit. Potatoes and tomatoes are in the same family (Nightshade) and are the most alike two plants in this family. Potato fruit and flowers are produced because this is how the plants multiply themselves—by seed. Both potatoes and tomatoes produce flowers; those on potatoes usually fall off and never develop into anything. However, … this year’s weather in some parts of the country—cool temps and rain—is “causing” (enabling?) them to remain on the plant, pollinate, and produce small fruit that resemble small tomatoes.

These are not edible; they are bitter-tasting and contain high amounts of solanine that can make you —or worse.

Trying to grow potatoes from the seeds could take years. Only breeders and growers find them useful.

So enjoy them. You may not see them again for a while. And your potatoes under the soil will be fine.

Thanks for asking!

Hi, I would like to know if

Hi, I would like to know if after you graft a potato and tomato together using well drained moist media, hydroponically with drip feeding, would the potato or sweet potato rot or become larger and better yields being left in the media until the tomato plant was pulled out after it's 3rd-4th harvest?

Farming

I want to be right guided about different farming

Rain go away??

I had 5 huge healthy potato plants and now none... :( all it has done is rain rain rain rain... I had two stragglers hanging on and they were about to spring back but guess what it rained again and today I looked and it looked like they were dying once again.. well you know what it's stinking 1 am and you know what it's doing again? RAINING!! I thought potatoes needed a lot if water/moisture? My potato box has plenty of holes in it for run off... I a so frustrated this was my first time for potatoes and they were so tall too they were about 4 foot high. Did the water really kill them?

potato troubles

How frustrating! Potatoes do like even moisture, about 1 to 2 inches of water a week. It sounds, though, as if yours got a lot more because of the uncooperative weather. You might still check below in the soil to see if any of the potato tubers survived and are still edible. Too much moisture can cause tubers to grow abnormally, such as cracks or odd nobs. The most important concern, perhaps, is that a lot of rain or overwatering, on leaves or in soil, can lead to disease, such as various wilts and rots. If you’d like to try again next year, and if you expect a lot of rain, perhaps you could devise a rain barrier (a large umbrella, even, might help to protect a single plant in a pot), or move containers under a shelter, if possible, during those downpours.

Small potatoes

I tried this year a bag for my potatoes. I planted them May 20 and yesterday I dig the potatoes out of the bag because the plant looked like part were brown dying. The harvest was a lot of dime and nickel russet potatoes. very little and maybe a little bigger some few. What did I do wrong?

voluntary potato plant

i have a voluntary potato plant come up. the plant is dying- it is half dying and stilll green. when i went to pull the grass around the plant i found 2 potato on top of the ground that had sprouted roots. i replanted them. will the orginal plant produce and will they be good to eat. should i go ahead and dig the original plant and can i eat the potatoes. and will the the 2 that i replanted produce potatoes before the end of october here in the state of indiana. my dad and brother were great gardeners but somehow i did not inherit their talent. thank you.

potato planting and harvest

Potato varieties will vary in the time that they take to mature, from about 90 to 110 days or more. Potatoes also like a soil temperature of 60 to 70 degrees F (not warmer or cooler). It may be too late to plant new potatoes now in Indiana. Purdue University Cooperative Extension Service in Indiana recommends that early-season potato varieties be planted as soon as the soil is dry enough to work in early spring; late-season types should be planted from late spring through mid-June. As temperatures cool in early fall, you could try to extend the season for your newly planted potatoes and see what develops – place row covers over the plants, encase them in tomato cages wrapped in clear plastic (with open top), or other measures to keep the heat around the plant and keep the soil warm as the weather starts to cool (do not do this during the heat of summer weather, though). Meanwhile, your original plant that still has some green to it and had already formed 2 potatoes – be sure to keep mounding soil around the base, or applying a thick layer of straw, to keep any developing potatoes from being exposed to light (which turns them green and somewhat toxic, and encourages the roots to grow, as you found with the two you planted). There might be some potatoes further down in the soil that are still developing. You might want to wait for harvest until the entire plant has died off (or at least when the tops of the plants have yellowed and are turning brown) for any developing potatoes to grow larger, or, if you’d rather not wait, you can carefully check in the soil to see if there might be anything there of a suitable size to harvest now. Gardeners sometimes harvest the smaller size potatoes as “new” potatoes in summer and early fall, before the tubers reach maturity.

Potatoes taste horrible

I've tried growing 3 different varieties, so far all of them taste like dirt. What am I doing wrong?

potato taste

Potatoes can taste off for several reasons, even after cleaning and scrubbing and peeling, which removes any actual soil left on the potato skin from the garden. Be careful about storage conditions – make sure they do not get any light (which makes them turn green and taste bitter), and avoid any high temperatures, which can change the flavor, too. Growing conditions can also affect flavor and health. Check the potatoes for any signs of disease – mold or rot – that might affect the taste; cut off any discolorations.

Can u just send me a comment

Can u just send me a comment to my gmail say hi so it can go faster
My gmail is noahburns002@gmail.com

Adding soil will they be ok?

Hi it is my first time growing potatoes and I had seen that you need to add soil to your plant after it has grown so tall. Well I didn't really know what this meant until doing further research. Well what I did was cover the entire plant with dirt.... ENTIRE plant. Will it be OK did I hurt it? I know now you just add soil to the base of the plant and. Uild upwards but I heaped it directly on the plant I have one starting to poke back through the surface but not sure about the others if they are coming through or not

Hilling Potatoes

You are right, it is usually best to leave the top group of leaves alone, but for the first hilling (which is what we call adding soil to potatoes), the plant can generally recover fine even if all leaves are covered. It is a good sign that one of the plants is starting to come up again, and hopefully others will follow!

Potatoes

Is it ok to cut the above ground foliage? If so, what are the rules? Also are potatoes which have appeared from previous years edible? Thank you.

Potato growing from potato boxes

I am growing potatoes from potatoes I purchased at WM they were from the actual seed area so they are not store bought potatoes like you would purchase to eat. I am growing them in potato boxes. I found the idea from the Internet. I built the boxes 8 inches and the potatoes grew great the plants are 3 foot tall as they grew I added more wood to the sides and added top soil as they grew. They are now dying I do not know why. The plants leaves have a brown area on them with holes like something is eating them. I have put down grub x and 7 dust the plants what can be killing them?

Brown Potato Leaves

It appears that your potato plants might be suffering from late blight. Watch this video to learn more about how you can stop the spread and save your potatoes.

Potato growing from potato boxes

From Walmart? If they aren't seed potatoes, don't try it. Most potatoes sold for eating are sprayed with sprout inhibitor and will not sprout. However, if they are sold as organic potatoes they will not be treated with inhibitor, and will probably grow just fine.

cutting off tops

Can I cut off the tops of my potatoes as they have taken over and I cant see where the actual plant is to lift and keep damaging the potatoes.

potatoes didn't flower and are dying

I planted my potatoes in a grow bag and hilled them quite often. I thought they were doing great until they started dying but didn't flower. Does that mean that I won't have any potatoes?