Planting potatoes

This post is actually a bit late.  I planted potatoes on March 9th this year.  But, it's still not too late to plant some yourself!

Last year, I planted 1 lb of yukon gold seed potatoes.  Like many great garden discoveries, this was completely unplanned.  I saw some seed potatoes at the local hardware store, and I decided that I wanted them.  I didn't even have room in the veggie garden, and these potatoes were planted in my front flower bed! It turned out that this was a great decision, because the potatoes did really well!

This year, we've planted 10 lbs of yukon golds, 2 lbs of red pontiac, and 2 lbs of kennebecs. (We got a bit more ambitious this year!)

Planting seed potatoes isn't very hard, depending on your method.

Seed potatoes must have an 'eye' to grow a plant.

First, you want to pick a nice sunny spot in your garden.  You can plant the seed potatoes whole, or you can cut them into smaller pieces, so long as each potato piece has an eye.  I chose to cut the potatoes so I get more plants per pound of seed.  I cut each seed potato into 2-3 parts, being sure that each part was large and included an eye.

Seed potatoes, cut and ready to be planted.

For the gold and red potatoes, I'm using a trench method.  Basically, you just dig a shallow trench, plant your seed potatoes (eye up) in the trench, and then cover them with a couple inches of soil.  As the plants grow, you continue to hill up along the sides of the plant.  I thought this method was pretty easy, but then again I wasn't the one who tilled the soil and dug the trenches (many thanks to the Mr!).

Potato trenches.

For the kennebecs, I'm using a scatter method.  In this method, you just lay the seed potatoes on the ground and cover with mulch.  As they grow, you continue covering them with mulch.  Kennebecs are supposed to grow well in the container method, and can yield a large amount of potatoes by growing vertically.  Even though I'm not using a container, I plan on mulching the Kennebecs a lot to see if I can get more out of them this way.

I planted all of the potatoes 18" apart to allow plenty of room for growth.

I purchased my seed potatoes at Sow True Seeds, and they have more information on growing potatoes on their website.