Growing Potatoes

Planting, Growing, and Harvesting Potatoes

Age-Old Wisdom meets Modern Tools

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Our Potato Growing Guide covers planting, growing, and harvesting one of our favorite vegetables! Also, see tips on how to store potatoes to keep them fresh—and some homemade potato recipes.

Potatoes can be planted very early in the gardening season—as you soon as the frost is out of the soil and you are able to work the soil!

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 was the best day to plant potatoes because the devil holds no power over them at this time.

See more information about planting potatoes below.

Planting

When to Plant Potatoes

Potatoes prefer cool weather.

In Northern regions, some gardeners will plant the first crop of early-maturing potatoes in early to mid-April, 6 to 8 weeks before the average last frost date or as soon as the soil can be worked; they can survive some cool weather but the threat of frost is a gamble. If there is a threat of frost at night, temporarily cover any sprouted foliage with mulch or an artificial covering such as old sheets or plastic containers (and be sure to remember to remove the coverings in the morning).

To avoid frost, consider starting potatoes 0 to 2 weeks after your 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 overly wet soil.
The soil, not the calendar, will tell you when it’s time to plant. The temperature of the soil should—ideally—be at least 50°F (10°C). The soil should also not be so wet that it sticks together and is hard to work. Let it dry out a bit first. Like other seeds, potato seed pieces will rot if planted in ground that’s too wet.

In Southern regions, potatoes can be grown as a winter crop and planting times range from September to February. Where winters are relatively mild, you can plant a fall crop in September. In central Florida, gardeners plant potatoes in January; and in Georgia they plant in February.

See our Planting Guide for the best dates to plant by zip code or postal code.

Preparing the Planting Site

Potatoes grow best in cool, well-drained, loose soil that is about 45° to 55°F (7° to 13°C).
Choose a location that gets full sun—at least 6 hours of sunlight each day.
Grow potatoes in rows spaced about 3 feet apart.
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.
Spread and mix in fully-rotted manure or organic compost in the bottom of the trench before planting. (Learn more about soil amendments and preparing soil for planting.)

Man planting potatoes. Photo by tanyss/Getty Images. — *Preparing seed potatoes for planting. Photo by tanyss/Getty Images.*

How to Plant Potatoes

In each trench, place a seed potato piece (cut side down) every 12 to 14 inches and cover with 3 to 4 inches of soil.
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.
The best starters are seed potatoes. Do not confuse seed potatoes with potato seeds or grocery produce! Select seed potatoes which have protruding eyes (buds).
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 yourself, 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” and is explained more here.).
After the potato plants have emerged, add organic mulch between the rows to conserve moisture, help with weed control, and cool the soil.

Check out this excellent video to see how to plant potatoes.

Care

How to Grow Potatoes

Hilling Potatoes

A critical part of growing potatoes is to not let their tubers (i.e., the potato crop) be exposed to sunlight for too long. Exposed tubers will turn green and produce a toxic compound called solanine, which makes them bitter, inedible, and potentially nausea-inducing.

To combat this, we employ a technique called hilling.

Hilling is simple: As a potato plant grows, it produces a main stem with leaves and flowers aboveground. Meanwhile, underground, tubers form on secondary stems that branch off from the main stem. In order to prevent shallow tubers from being exposed to sunlight and to encourage the plant to keep producing more tubers, a few inches of soil are periodically “hilled” up around the base of the stem. This is typically done three to four times during the season.

Tips for growing and hilling potatoes:

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 aboveground part of the plant is at least a foot tall. Hoe the dirt up around the base of the plant in order to cover the tubers as well as to support the plant.
Practice yearly crop rotation with potatoes.

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

When 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. New potatoes should not be cured and should be eaten within a few days of harvest, as they will not keep for much longer than that.
For mature potatoes, wait 2 to 3 weeks after the plant’s foliage has died back. The tops of the plants need to have completely died before you begin harvesting. 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 (especially in moisture-laden soil).
Toughen up potatoes for storage before harvest by not watering them much after mid-August.
Dig up a test hill to see how mature the potatoes are. The skins of mature potatoes are thick and firmly attached to the flesh. If the skins are thin and rub off easily, your potatoes are still too new and should be left in the ground for a few more days.
Potatoes can tolerate light frost, but when the first hard frost is expected, it’s time to get out the shovels and start digging potatoes.

How to Harvest Potatoes

Dig potatoes up on a dry day. Dig up gently, being careful not to damage the tubers. Avoid cutting or bruising potato skin. Damaged potatoes will rot during storage and should be used as soon as possible. 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.
Don’t leave the potatoes that you have dug in the sun for long after they have been dug up from your garden, otherwise your potatoes may turn green. Green potatoes have a bitter taste due to the presence of solanine, and if enough is eaten, can cause vomiting and diarrhea. Small spots can be trimmed off, but if there is significant greening, throw the potato out.

How to Store Potatoes

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 potatoes in a cool, dark place, preferably 45° to 50°F (7° to 10°C), with good ventilation. When properly stored, potatoes will remain fresh for up to a month. Throw away potatoes that are shriveled, green, or have many sprouts.
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.

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

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.

“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)

Recipes

Cooking Notes

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

Reader Comments

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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?

Not all potato plants flower;

Not all potato plants flower; you still might get potatoes under the ground. Check carefully in the soil to see if you feel any potatoes developing.

Little red potatoes growing

I dug down quite a bit and found some little reds growing so I tried to replant them and water them well. Hopefully that will work. After digging the soil seemed really to be in good condition as I was suspicious that I may have watered them too much.

most of the plants are dead(3 still growing)

I decided to go ahead and see what I had in my bag. I planted Pontiac Reds in a potatoe bag and followed the instructions pretty well. I thought they were OK until they started to die and they also never flowered. You told me previously that sometimes they don't flower. I have a lot of very very small red potatoes. Some no bigger than a marble. I want to try it again but am fearful that I missed something. I took a picture but it appears there is no way of sending it to you. I am looking for any suggestions so that I can have a fruitful crop. I also have two other potato crops growing in planters and they also seem to be doing OK with flowers. I am going to wait on these as they are still doing great or at least that is the way it looks.

Blue Potatoes-First time Grower

My daughter brought me home some baby blue seed potatoes from her work, so I dug a trench and planted the potatoes, when they got a little taller I put some dirt around them, but that has been it. I have these gorgeous really really tall potatoe plants, that have flowered. I didn't hill the dirt, ever again. So my worry is will I have potatoes? One of them has one of those poisonous berries growing on them. The plants have no bugs and look super healthy. Being a first time grower I had no clue what I was doing, I was excited about attempting to do a garden. The plants are tall so I used some stakes and string to help hold them up.

Trenches that are 7 to 8

Trenches that are 7 to 8 inches deep should require less hilling. A relatively shallow trench of about 4 inches would need 6 to 8 inches of hilling. How deep was your trench? Also remember that part of the reason you hill is to keep keep the spuds moist; the soil helps with that. When you reach the desirable height, consider mulching. Potatoes need at least 1 inch of water per week. We hope this helps and that you have a hefty harvest!

Last years organic potatoes

I used left over potatoes that I stored poorly as my seed potatoes. Is that bad? I just read your answer to someone else not to use last years potatoes. Some were green as well. Will they be ok? If not, why? What is different about "seed" potatoes as well, thank you:)

seed potatoes

Grocery store potatoes are for eating; they are treated with a sprout inhibitor so they will have shelf life in the store. (Sure, eyes may sprout but not like those that appear on seed potatoes.) Seed potatoes are grown to produce edible potatoes. Certified seed potatoes are disease-free. Sources we consulted do not recommend using your harvested potatoes (from seed potatoes) for the next year’s crop. Opinions are mixed. If you do use your harvested potatoes as seed potatoes, strict storage conditions are advised (storage in a coo [50°F] area after harvest, then a 3 to 4 week period of hardening off/outdoor exposure and high humidity—also called greening. Crop rotation is also highly recommended. But that will not guarantee a desirable crop. Using green spuds is another topic on which growers take different sides.

Am I doing it right

I planted a potato about 8 weeks ago. I do not want it to be poisonous but I don't know if I am growing it right. I am giving it plenty of water and if it grows something i don't want it to be poisonous
Please help

Poison potato?

Eight weeks is a long time to wait for your potato plant to send up some greens. If there is no sign of life coming from the soil something is wrong and nothing is growing.

Taters

I guess I forgot to completely inform you on everything. I started it with chits, about 6 inches from the bottom. The leaves grew through, every few inches I would cover them again. Now I am about 6 inches from the top of the bag. And something (I think it was an animal) ate the tops off. So again. Will my taters inside be okay? Will they re sprout? Or should i just dump the bag and start over?
Thank you again, and I apoligize for the first entry.

topless potatoes

Without the tops, William, you might as well discard the bag. The leaves produce food for the tubers. Without the leaves, growth stops. Sorry to be the bearer of the news…

Taters

I have taters growing in a bag. Well something happened to the tops of the plants. Will they regrow? Will my taters inside the bag still grow? Or do I just empty the bag and start over?