Planting Potatoes 6-1-2010

by Farmer Dave
(Northern California)

Planting potatoes on June 1st this year.

In Northern California potato planting is usually done in early April for our early summer eating potatoes and early May for our winter keeper potatoes. This year has been a very wet and cold spring with lots of frosts and rain at our place at 1700 feet. There is lots of snow at 4000 feet and above so were planting everything pretty late this year. No early potatoes this season.

Here is an excerpt from my Victory Garden ebook on how to grow potatoes.

Potatoes were first grown in the high Andes and some of the traditional varieties are still available. Most people like the larger and sweeter potatoes of today. Potato seed which is actually not seed but potatoes that have been saved for planting are found in abundance at your nursery and feed stores in the spring.
If you grow potatoes it is good to set some fist sized potatoes aside in a cool place for spring planting. I like to grow a few purple potatoes from the Andes as they are very unique and beautiful but my main crop is Yukon Gold and Russets. These are very disease resistant and great potatoes. I grow some Red potatoes for early eating but find that they often develop rotten cores or get scab.

Soil & Amendments- Potatoes prefer a rich soil slightly on the acid side. Use well composted
manure or compost. If your soil is not acid enough potatoes, especially some varieties, will develop scab.

Culture: Plant 2-4 weeks before the last expected spring frost. We like to plant small whole potatoes between egg size and fist size. Some people like to get big potatoes and cut them into pieces with 2 or 3 big eyes and then plant them. I have always had bad luck with the potato pieces rotting so I don't try it any more but some people swear by it.

Plant your seed potatoes 1 ft apart in rows 3ft apart in furrows 6inches deep. Dig a small hole in the bottom of the furrow and drop the potatoes into the hole, cover them lightly and leave the furrow open. As the potatoes grow, fill in the furrows, always leaving a few inches of your potato plant showing. When you have filled in the furrows hill up the potatoes in the same fashion above the surface of the soil creating a mound. The potatoes will form in the soil that is hilled up around the potato plants. Mulch the potatoes heavily as they grow.

Harvest the potatoes when the plants die or leave them in the ground and harvest as needed. You can dig around the plants mid summer without killing the plants and get some immature early eating potatoes. If you have well drained soil and a lot of mulch you can leave them in the ground all winter. We harvest ours and keep them in a root cellar in boxes or bags so we can cover crop our garden for the winter. Don?t store potatoes in the same room as apples.

Grow lots of potatoes!