It’s time to plant the potatoes. Potatoes are the only crop I do not grow at my house. I grow them across town at my grandfather’s house in a patch that we share with he and my parents. It’s really nice having a separate place to grow potatoes because of the amount of space they take up.

This year we are growing three types of potatoes; red pontiac, yukon gold, and katahdin. We have grown all three of these varieties in the past and all have produced nicely. At our local hardware/garden store we are able to buy seed potatoes by the pound. They sell them for $0.59 a lb.,which seems like a good deal compared to the prices in the seed catalogs.

Before we started planting we ran the rototiller through the garden to turn over the soil.

The potato patch before the planting.

We do not plant our seed potatoes whole, we usually cut them into pieces making sure we have at least one or two eyes on each piece.

Cut seed potatoes.

We used one of the wheel paths created by the rototiller to plant potatoes in. Each piece of potato is placed in the row with the eyes facing up. We spaced the potatoes about 24 inches apart down the row and spaced each row about 30 to 36 inches apart. This should give the potatoes adequate room to grow.

A row of planted potatoes.

Once the row was planted we came back down the row raking soil back over the potatoes creating a mound. As the potatoes begin to grow we will go back down the row pulling more soil over the potatoes, making sure that the entire time the potatoes are growing they are covered up. Keeping the potatoes covered helps ensure that they are not exposed to light, which causes the outer layer of the potato to turn green.

A row of potatoes planted and covered.

The completed potato patch.

The potatoes are planted.

Happy growing…