Tips for planting potatoes
Potato plants are compoused by stems, leaves, flowers, leaves and tubers. Tubers are part of the underground stem system of the plant that is used for food storage. The parts of the potato plant that we eat are the tubers, also known as potatoes.
Potatoes can be grown from seed potatoes. The seed pieces are made from specially-grown potatoes by cutting the potato into pieces with ‘eyes’.
Potatoes plants require full sun to grow. Because they are aggressively rooting plants, they will produce the best crop when planted in a light, loose, well-drained but moisture retentive loam. Planting potatoes remember that they prefer a slightly acid soil with a pH of 5.8-6.5.
Potatoes grow in three seasons every year. Planting in March means that this crop will be called ‘Earlies’. Main crop potatoes are planted in April.
To prepare the potatoes ready for planting they need to be left to sprout in a dry place, this is called chitting.
Before planting the seed potatoes the ground will need to be prepared. This means digging the soil and mixing it with fertiliser, which will provide the nutrients or food the plant needs to help it grow.
Potatoes are usually grown in rows. For planting potatoes you need to dig a small trench around 10cm wide and 15-20cm deep, the more space the potatoes have to grow the better.
Put the potato seeds in the trench – they will need to be about 30cm apart with the sprouts turned up.
Then cover the seeds with around 10cm of soil. Make sure the potatoes are always full covered or the sun will turn them green.
Once the potato plants have grown to around 20cm high, you need to add more soil. This will form a hill shape or ridge with the half way point of the plant.
This is to stop the potatoes growing above the level of the ground –
any potatoes which are exposed to sunlight whilst growing, will turn green. The green parts are poisonous!
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