Potatoes require a cool on the other hand frost-free expanding season. Increase potatoes throughout the summer time in cool northern spaces. Increase potatoes in fall, winter, and spring in scorching summer time southern spaces.
Here is all of the data to expanding potatoes.
Rapid Potato Emerging Guidelines
- Plant potatoes as early as 4 to 6 weeks previous than the everyday ultimate frost in spring or any time after the soil temperature warms to 40°F (4.4°C).
- Potatoes need 75 to 135 or further cool, frost-free days to reach harvest depending on the variety.
- Harvest late winter or spring-planted potatoes previous than daily temperatures average 80°F (27°C)
- Potatoes do not expand successfully in over the top heat or dry soil. Most sensible temperatures may motive mature potatoes to discolor inside.
Which potato to plant: Potato Types and Varieties.
Where to Plant Potatoes
- Increase potatoes in whole sun.
- Plant potatoes in fertile, well-drained soil rich in herbal topic. Add a lot of inches of aged-compost or commercial herbal planting mix to planting beds previous than planting.
- Loosen the soil to 18 inches (45cm) deep or expand potatoes in raised or mounded beds.
- Do not expand potatoes where the soil is compacted, heavy with clay, or many times wet.
- A soil pH of 5.0 to 5.5 is easiest for potatoes. Alkaline soil will build up the size of the crop however as well as will build up the superiority of scab–a scenario that has effects on the skin of the potato.
Excellent Products for Emerging Your Garden
When to Plant Potatoes: Early, Midseason, and Overdue
Potato types are categorised in line with the number of days they require to return again to harvest. The most efficient temperature for expanding potatoes is 60° to 70°F (16-21°C); temperatures greater than 80°F (26°C) are typically too warmth for potatoes. Increase a variety that can come to harvest in cool to refined, no longer scorching, local weather.
- “Early” season (early maturing) types require 75 to 90 cool days to reach harvest. Early potatoes are the best choice for southern spaces where summers become very popular or scorching.
- “Midseason” types require 90 to 135 cool days to reach harvest.
- “Late-season” (sometimes called long season) types require 135 to 160 cool days to reach harvest. Overdue-season potatoes are a good choice for northern spaces where the weather stays refined all summer time.
Spring planting potatoes
- Plant potatoes 3 to 4 weeks previous than the ultimate spring frost; in Zone 7 and warmer, plant a second crop in late summer time or fall. Time the planting in spring so that new foliage is not killed throughout the ultimate frost.
- In refined summer time spaces, you can plant early, mid-season, and late-maturing cultivars in spring for an extended harvest season.
Summer season planting potatoes for autumn harvest
- Plant potatoes no later than 12 weeks previous than the principle expected autumn frost.
Planting potatoes in refined winter spaces
- If you find yourself dwelling where winters are refined and summers are scorching, plant late-season potatoes in winter for harvest in mid to late spring previous than the weather turns scorching, or plant early-season potatoes in late summer time for a fall crop.
Emerging potatoes in sub-tropical and tropical spaces
- In tropical and subtropical spaces potatoes will also be grown all year round, even supposing they are easiest planted in summer time and autumn for harvest previous than the rainy season.
Yield. Potatoes are extraordinarily productive and can yield 6 to 8 pounds (3-4kg) of tubers in line with sq. yard (meter).
Further pointers: Potato Emerging Guidelines.
Getting in a position Seed Potatoes for Planting
- Increase potatoes from “seed potatoes.” Seed potatoes will also be whole potatoes or pieces of whole potatoes.
- Potatoes are swollen stems, no longer roots.
- A seed potato must have a minimum of one “eye” to sprout. An “eye” is a bud, a puckered spot where sprouts increase; sprouts increase stems and leaves.
- Plant certified disease-free seed potatoes. Grocery retailer potatoes have been chemically treated to inhibit sprouting. Seed potatoes will also be purchased at a garden heart or from mail-order suppliers.
- Store seed potatoes inside the refrigerator for up to one month previous than planting.
- You can plant seed potatoes whole, or decrease them to regarding the duration of a medium egg, with two or 3 buds apiece.
- Two or 3 weeks previous than planting, set seed potatoes in a shiny, 65° to 70°F (18-21°C) place to encourage sprouting.
- Decrease whole seed potatoes into pieces with a sharp knife two days previous than planting; every piece must have a minimum of two eyes After lowering, you’ll have to let the pieces remedy for one to two days at 75°F (24°C).
- Even though you may well be planting whole seed potatoes, it’s easiest to remedy them in a warmth place for two days previous than planting; this may occasionally most probably encourage the most productive enlargement.
- Plant seed potatoes in a hole or trench 3 to 4 inches (7.5-10cm) deep and cover with 2 inches (5cm) of soil.
- Plant decrease pieces with the decrease side down.
- When you wish to have not to dig, or if the soil is heavy clay or wet, you can lay the tubers on the soil flooring and cover them with 4 to 6 inches (10-15cm) of straw or composted leaves.
Planting and Spacing Potatoes
- Early Varieties Spacing: Sow early variety seed potatoes 8 to 14 inches (20-35cm) apart; space rows 12 to 18 inches (30-45cm) apart.
- Overdue Varieties Spacing: Sow late variety seed potatoes 12 to 14 inches (30-35cm) apart; space rows 30 to 36 inches (75-90cm) apart.
- When seedlings (growing sprouts) emerge, add the remaining 2 inches (5cm) of soil to the outlet or trench.
- Keep together with gentle soil as plants expand tall. Cross away the very best two gadgets of leaves exposed.
- Potatoes moreover will also be planted on best of the ground if they are lined with a 12-inch (30cm) thick mulch of straw or hay.
- Each plant will produce about 5 to 10 potatoes or 3 to 4 pounds (1.3-1.8 kilo).
Crop Rotation and Potatoes
- Potatoes are related to bell peppers, chili peppers, and eggplants; all are at risk of the equivalent diseases.
- Don’t expand potatoes where any of the ones vegetables have grown previously 4 years.
Further pointers: Potato Seed Starting Guidelines.
Container Emerging Potatoes
- Potatoes will also be grown in packing containers. Use a shallow picket box or an element barrel with the bottom removed; use stacked out of date tires or use explicit potato-growing baggage or barrels.
- Plant seed potatoes at the bottom of the container.
- When plants expand from 8 to 10 inches (20-5cm)all, add enough soil to cover all on the other hand essentially the most good 2 or 3 gadgets of leaves. Continue this process until the maturity date for the variability you may well be expanding then harvest.
Emerging Potatoes in Trenches, Mulch or Boxes.
Important different Plants for Potatoes
- Increase potatoes with beans, cabbage, corn, and eggplant.
- Keep away from planting potatoes with regards to cucumbers, pumpkins, squash, sunflowers, tomatoes, or raspberries. The ones plants are attacked throughout the equivalent pests and diseases as potatoes.
Caring for Potatoes
Watering potatoes
- Keep potatoes flippantly rainy on the other hand no longer wet; water previous than the soil dries out.
- Potato tubers will rot if the soil is simply too wet.
- Even soil moisture is very important; fluctuations in soil moisture—wet, dry, wet—may end up in cracked or knobby tubers.
- Mulch to offer protection to tubers from the sun, maintain soil moisture, prevent the soil from becoming too warmth, keep weeds down, and discourage pest insects.
Feeding potatoes
- Feed potatoes via sprinkling 5-10-10 fertilizer across the planting bed previous than planting; add this over again as a side dressing at midseason. Select a fertilizer that includes calcium and magnesium.
- Keep away from giving potatoes a substantial amount of nitrogen; a substantial amount of nitrogen will encourage foliage enlargement over tuber enlargement.
- Where the soil is poor, drench the soil with a cup or further of compost tea shortly after planting. Spray-mist foliage with compost tea every two weeks throughout the season.
Caring for Potatoes
- Be careful not to compact the soil spherical potatoes. Use boards between rows to steer clear of walking on the soil.
- Give protection to maturing tubers from sunlight via hilling up soil over plants or applying additional mulch to all on the other hand quilt the plants. Exposed tubers will sunburn or their shoulders will become green (known as greening). Green potatoes produce a chemical known as solanine. Solanine is every bitter-tasting and toxic.
- Slightly cultivate spherical plants or mulch to stick weeds down.
Hilling Potatoes
- Exposure to gentle may motive potato tubers to turn green; the green pores and pores and skin is quite toxic.
- Give protection to the tubers from gentle via “hilling up” soil when the green shoots or stems are about 4 to 5 inches (10.12.5cm) tall. Use a hoe to mound up soil leaving just a few leaves exposed to sunlight. Hilling can even keep the tubers cool and rainy. Hill the plants over again two or 3 weeks later.
- Ground-planted potatoes will also be filled via piling mulch deeply around the plant; you can use straw or composted leaves moderately than soil.
Potato Pests and Diseases
Potato pests
- Potatoes will also be attacked via Colorado potato beetles, leafhoppers, flea beetles, and aphids. Potato beetles and flea beetles chew holes in leaves. Duvet plants with floating row quilt until midseason to exclude the ones pests.
- Handpick every adults and larvae Colorado potato beetles and smash them.
- Use Bacillus thuringiensis to keep an eye on potato beetles, leafhoppers, and flea beetles.
- Knock aphids off plants with a formidable blast of water.
- Stunted plants with puckered or yellow leaves, small bumps on the tubers, or exhausting galls on the roots have been attacked via root-knot nematodes; smash infected plants. To forestall nematode problems, plant a cover crop of marigolds, and apply really helpful nematodes to the soil.
Potato diseases
- Potatoes are at risk of blight and scab.
- Spray plants with compost tea every two weeks to keep an eye on blights.
- Scab may motive potatoes to have tricky pores and pores and skin on the other hand does no longer affect the eating prime quality of the potato. Decrease away the corky areas
- If scab is a matter, keep an eye on the soil pH to 5.5.
- Plant disease-resistant types and observe crop rotation.
Further on potato problems: Potato Emerging Problems: Troubleshooting.
Harvesting and Storing Potatoes
Harvesting potatoes
- Potato stems and leaves turn brown and crops fade as tubers underneath flooring mature.
- Potato tubers will also be harvested at any duration. Potatoes harvested previous than they mature are known as new potatoes.
- New potatoes will also be harvested when plants are in whole bloom.
- As potatoes mature their skins harden. The out of doors of a brand spanking new potato will merely peel off when rubbed. New potatoes cannot be stored on the other hand must be used instantly.
- A potato plant will produce 3 to 6 regular-size potatoes and a number of small ones.
- Use a spading fork to dig up potatoes. Lift potatoes gently to steer clear of bruising or harmful the skins. Use your palms to harvest potatoes if need be.
- You can harvest all of the plant or gently break off tubers, doing away with a maximum of two tubers in line with plant while you intend to let the plant expand on and harvest over again.
- To harvest mature tubers, wait until the tops of the plants die once more. Cross away the tubers inside the flooring for a few weeks after the tops die once more; this may occasionally most probably allow the skins to give a boost to and the potatoes will store upper.
- Take a look at one or two potatoes previous than lifting all the crop. Use damaged potatoes in an instant and store the rest in a dismal, dry place, with superb air motion.
- Potatoes will also be left inside the flooring earlier maturity until the principle frost, on the other hand they are most nutritious if harvested after they mature.
- If first is not impending and vines are not lack of existence once more, knock the vines flat or decrease them with a knife to kill them. You can then proceed to harvest.
- Early potatoes take about 60 days to reach maturity; mid-season potatoes take about 80 days; late-season potatoes need 90 days or longer to mature.
- Give protection to harvested potatoes from sunlight; potatoes exposed to gentle will green and produce a bitter chemical compound known as solanine.
- Allow potatoes to remedy previous than storing them. Curing will harden the skins for storage. Set tubers in a single layer in a dismal place at 50° to 60°F (10-15°C) for two weeks to remedy.
- Brush further dust off the tubers, on the other hand don’t wash them; they are easiest stored with dust on, as that is serving to exclude gentle and stop them from turning green.
- Store potatoes at about 40° (4.4°C).
- Potatoes can even store successfully inside the flooring as long as the weather is not too wet or warmth.
- Save the most productive tubers for planting next season. Don’t save potatoes which may also be comfortable or discolored. Don’t save potatoes if any of the plants have been hit via a sickness.
When to harvest: Potato Harvest Calendar.
Storing and preserving potatoes
- Store potatoes in a dismal, well-ventilated place at about 40°F (4.4°C). Do not wash them previous than storing; allow them to air dry at 50-65°F (10-18°C) for five days previous than storing.
- Potatoes will keep for roughly 6 months.
- Do not refrigerate potatoes.
- In a position or new potatoes freeze successfully. Potatoes moreover will also be dried.
Further pointers: The way to Harvest and Store Potatoes.
Potato Varieties to Increase
- There are more than 100 forms of potatoes.
- There are 4 elementary potato categories: long whites, round whites, russets, and round reds. You can moreover expand potatoes with yellow or bluish-purple skins.
- Potato flesh could also be white or have compatibility the skin color: pink, yellow, or blue.
- Potatoes will also be round, cylindrical, or finger-like, known as fingerlings
- Potatoes will also be classified as rainy or dry. Dry potatoes are superb for baking and mashing (types include ‘Russet Burbank’ and ‘Butte’). Rainy potatoes fall apart when cooked; they are a good choice for soups.
- Check your cooperative extension supplier for particular ideas in your area.
Recommended types
Listed below are potato types to expand in a area garden:
- ‘All Blue’: midseason medium-sized potato with blue pores and pores and skin and blue-purple flesh; use mashed, steamed, baked, roasted, and in salads.
- ‘Butte’: early season; baking.
- ‘Caribe’: early season; drought tolerant; all-purpose use.
- ‘Carola’: late-season; yellow flesh; all-purpose use.
- ‘Cranberry Red’: early- to midseason; pink pores and pores and skin and red, blank flesh; use mashed, steamed, roasted, and in salads.
- ‘French Fingerling’: late-season; use roasted, baked, and in salads.
- ‘Katahdin’: midseason; use French-fried, baked, mashed, or roasted.
- ‘Purple Peruvian’: late-season; use roasted, baked, and in salads.
- ‘Red Gold’: midseason: all-purpose use.
- ‘Red Norland’: early season; use boiled, steamed, mashed, or in salads.
- ‘Red Thumb’: early season fingerling; roasting.
- ‘Rose Finn Apple’: late-season; all-purpose use.
- ‘Russian Banana’: late-season; use roasted, baked, or in salads.
- ‘Yellow Finn’: midseason yellow-fleshed variety; all-purpose use; superb for mashing and baking.
- ‘Yukon Gold’: early season; use boiled, mashed, or in a salad.
Similar articles: Potatoes for Cooking; moreover Potatoes: Kitchen Basics
About Potatoes
- The potato is a perennial vegetable grown as an annual.
- Botanical identify: Solanum tuberosum
- Basis: Chile, Peru, Mexico
Further pointers: Emerging Herbal Potatoes.
Increase 80 vegetables: THE KITCHEN GARDEN GROWERS’ GUIDE
