Planting Purple Peruvian Potatoes - My Potato Planting Method This Year

sagescrub (64)in #gardening • 5 years ago

I planted these Purple Peruvian potatoes today!

We purchased a small paper sack of seed potatoes last year from a local farmer - this is what we grew out and harvested at the end of last season. They are not huge but we got a lot compared to what we started with. After doing more reading on potatoes I realized that one of the factors that may contribute to the smallish potatoes is that the plants were planted too close together. I got greedy and packed them in!! That is one of the things I am changing up in my planting method this year.

I am planting out 3 sets of different types of potatoes (not including the potatoes I am starting from true potato seed). I am staggering out the plantings and getting some of them in early so we can have some early potato harvests. About a week and a half ago I planted a few Rose Fin potatoes 3-4" deep and the first leaves popped up today.. how exciting! A few volunteer potatoes are also starting to sprout up their leaves so the soil is definitely warm enough for planting potatoes now.

The potatoes started growing sprouts in storage and so they chitted themselves and I didn't even have to! And it is very nice of these Purple Peruvian potatoes to grow short stout and strong sprouts rather than long spindly ones. So I let them sit outside in a covered area (for frost protection) with some ambient light to green up and strengthen the chitted sprouts before planting.

From what I read it seems wise to plant potatoes no earlier than a few weeks before last frost. I am pushing it here a lot because our last frost is historically around June 1st. I am pushing it for a few reasons: With global warming our last frost is pushing back around mid May. Even with that I am still early. There is another trick up my sleeve that I just learned. First of all potatoes can tolerate some frost and if the tops of their leaves get nipped by frost they still have enough energy to keep growing. If they have a lot of leaves above ground already when a frost is expected, you can hill them up and that will protect them for a short while!

Last year I dug a long trench and planted potatoes pretty close.. about 4-6" in one row. This year I am planting them 12" apart in the row and I ended up with 4 rows, each row about 16" apart. I think this will yield bigger potatoes with the larger spacing. I also dug individual holes about 4-6" deep rather than a long trench. That saved a lot of time and effort! The bed was also given extra compost.

Here is a potato ready to be planted. The top end with more eyes is called the rose end. The best I can figure is that's the end where the sprouts rose from, but maybe there is another reason it got that name. The sprouts look so healthy and strong!

I understand it is best practice to have only 1-3 sprouts so I took off the rest. Some people prefer to cut the potatoes after sprouts appear so that each piece only has one sprout or 2 or 3 sprouts. I read varying opinions so I think this is not a hard and fast science. But the idea is too many sprouts yield smaller potatoes.

The potato gets placed in the hole, rose end and sprouts up.

Towards the lower end of this bed, which is on a slope, there is standing water only a few inches down. We just had a LOT of rain last week and the soil here is very clay. I was debating if it is OK to plant the potatoes in so much water. My gut feeling is they will be OK, especially if they are not fully covered with water, and especially that the sprouts are already started and strong. But I don't know for sure so I am just trying it out to see. Luckily only a portion of the end of the bed is that wet.

I add some compost to the holes and some wood ash for extra Potassium. Then I rake the soil over. Now I start a second row of planting holes next to the first and repeat the process.

I ended up planting four rows in this bed. This is the last row almost covered.

And some of the smaller potatoes saved for enjoying in tonight's stew to celebrate!!

After the above ground portion of the potato plants get about 6" high I will start hilling them up.

The last thing I did was mark off with some sticks where the planting ended so that I know where I can and can't plant in this bed later on. I don't know yet what or when that will be... it will be a surprise!

Wishing you abundance in your garden!