Potatoes are a staple ingredient of almost every diet. The process of growing potatoes is very simple. First, you have to pick the potato of your choice. Once you have decided on which potato you want to plant, the next step would be getting the seeds.
Potato seeds
You can purchase potato seeds either online or from a local store. You can also use the leftover potatoes at your home. However, using the leftover potatoes will not guarantee disease-free potatoes. It can lead to a perpetual problem if you decide to raise potatoes in the same place again. Diseases tend to be carried in the soil year after year. Going for a certified seed stock will allow you to reduce the risk of viruses and potato diseases.
Prepare the potatoes for planting.
For this, you can use a sharp, non-serrated knife. First, slice the potatoes into quarters. Make sure that no piece has more than three eyes. Place the potatoes in the sun. Let them be exposed for a few days till you start to notice the eyes growing into sprouts.
Next, use empty seed trays or egg boxes to put the potatoes in an upright condition. Once you notice the shoots start to grow, the potatoes are ready to plant.
Make sure that you allow only 2-3 shoots to exist on every potato. Remove the rest.
To plant the potatoes, you can either choose to go to your traditional garden or produce the potatoes in raised garden beds. You can get garden raised beds on sale online. Add rotten compost and potato fertilizer to the ground to prepare. Ensure that the soil is loose in structure. Potatoes do not grow in compact or hard soil.
Pick the right time to plant
The time of planting is very crucial. Start planting one or two weeks before the last frost of the season. The cold during nights will kill the potential pests, and your potatoes will receive more sunshine as the days start to grow longer.
Pick the right region in the garden.
Make sure that your planter is located or potato gardening is being done at a place with plenty of sunlight. Never plant potatoes in the shaded region of the garden.
Make sure that you plant potatoes in different regions of the garden every year so that the soil can get rest and replenish the nitrogen. You can also fill the nitrogen with liquid fertilizer during the growing season after the potatoes have been harvested.
Put the seeds at least 2 inches deep. Cover it with soil. As the potatoes start to grow, keep covering the soil on the top. When you notice that the plants are beginning to die, it is time to lift and harvest.
If the potatoes are being grown in a raised garden bed, you will not have to worry about the weeds. It will be very easy to spot weeds in raised beds, so you can easily remove them by hand.
