Growing Potatoes

Have you ever looked in your pantry and seen sprouting potatoes? These potatoes work wonderfully to plant and grow more potatoes! In just a few steps, you can have your own potato plants!

The sprouts coming out of the potatoes are called eyes. The first step to plant your potatoes is to cut a potato into pieces with each piece having a few eyes.

Allow these pieces to dry for 1 or 2 days to make them less susceptible to rotting. Then, plant the potatoes with the cut side down (the eyes facing up) and cover them with 3 to 4 inches of dirt. If you have a garden with planting boxes, this would be a great location to plant your potatoes, but a pile of dirt works as well. Plant the potato pieces about a foot away from the next nearest potato piece. Water the potato plants with about 1-2 inches of water per week.

In about 2 weeks, when the first sprouts start to appear, cover the potato plants with another 3 to 4 inches of soil. Repeat this when the sprouts start to appear again. When the potato stem, called a tuber, is exposed to sunlight for too long, it will turn green and produce a toxic compound called solanine. Solanine makes the potatoes bitter, inedible, and potentially nausea-inducing. The process of adding dirt to the potato plants is called hilling and prevents the production of solanine.

For mature potatoes, wait 2 to 3 weeks after the plant’s foliage has completely died back to harvest. Cut the foliage to the ground and wait 10 to 14 days before harvesting to allow the potatoes to develop a thick enough skin. If you wait too long, the potatoes will rot.

Now you have delicious potatoes to eat and enjoy!

For more information on growing potatoes, visit https://www.almanac.com/plant/potatoes#hilling%20potatoes