planting seed potatoes

Monday, May 17th, 2010

After what seems like an unbelievable wait, I finally planted my seed potatoes in their little round bed on Friday. First there was a stretch of bad, rainy weather. Then there were a few nights of near-frost temps, and then on top of it all, my younger sister went ahead and had her twins. Wahooo!

Yeah, It’s been quite a roller coaster ride over the past few weeks. But I stayed strong, and I got those potatoes into the ground!

To give a little context, I have wanted to try growing potatoes for a few years now. Every year I try to add new veggies and new planting techniques to my garden, and this year I knew that potatoes would be at the top of my list. I have thought long and hard about these taters and exactly where and how to grow them.

I knew that we would need some sort of a dedicated growing space. And that space can’t be where you’ve planted other nightshades, such as tomatoes or peppers or eggplants. So that ruled out my usual raised garden bed. I thought about growing potatoes in a barrel or garbage can, which you can easily do, but it just didn’t seem “pretty” to me. I wanted aesthetics, too.

Especially when I read about how nice potato flowers can be! So Craig and I created a new garden bed, just for potatoes.

The idea here is to have the potatoes in the middle and herbs growing along the outsides.
So far my chives and cilantro are coming up.

Then I did my research on finding organic seed potatoes. It is very easy to find growers in the Northeast. Maine is a veritable organic potato haven! But I didn’t have a huge ton of space to grow potatoes, and I wanted to try multiple varieties without having to spend a ton. I couldn’t really find anyone selling a “grab bag” of organic taters.

Until I looked into Gardener’s Supply Company. I have bought many things from them in the past, including my first two raised garden beds. I have never been disappointed in their products. So when I found their sweet deal on “flowering organic potatoes” I had to give it a try.

Granted it was a weensy bit more money than I wanted to spend, but I wanted a small amount of seed potatoes in a good variety. In this case, they send you a pound and a half of 6 varieties of organic seed potatoes for $19.95. For a first-timer, I figured this is perfect. I can figure out what grows well, what varieties I enjoy, and then choose what I want to try to grow again next year.

I placed my order at the end of March and waited almost 2 weeks—they space out the shipping depending on your growing season. My potatoes arrived 2 weeks ago, and the packaging alone was totally worth the money. This wasn’t like getting some bulbs or a packet of seeds in the mail, this was like getting a birthday present.

Here is what the box looked like:

Potatoes? For me? Aw....

I couldn’t contain myself! I had to break open that golden seal. And here is what I saw when I opened the box:

Potatoes and confetti!!!

Just amazing. They were so cute. These potatoes are organic certified seed from Wood Prairie Farm in Bridgewater, Maine. They came with official tags from the Maine Department of Agriculture.

A seed potato is really just a “leftover” potato that you can plant again to produce new potatoes. Just like taking apart a garlic bulb to plant the cloves to grow new garlic bulbs.

And each variety came with its own really cool americana-esque postcard telling me about that particular potato.

Talk about presentation! I was so excited and impressed. Plus, the awesome folks at Wood Prairie Farm included a really informative, handy guide about how to plant and grow their potatoes.

Their recommendation was to let the potatoes sun themselves indoors for up to a week in order to get the sprouts growing. So I put the opened box on my bookshelf in the living room where there is lots of sun. And then they sat. And sat. And sat. For more than a week I’m afraid.

Well, they definitely got some good sprouting time. I see eyes!!!

I was worried that they would start to get moldy or smushy. But they held up just fine. And by Friday, the last of the chilly overnight temps had subsided according to the weather forecast. So I dug a deep, round trench in the potato bed and then brought them outside to plant.

According to the directions, you should plant the whole seed pieces 2 to 3 inches deep (I chose 2 inches since I’m growing potatoes in a northern climate), spaced 12 inches apart with at least 30 inches between each row. Here is the planting diagram they included:

I made sure to loosen the soil in the bed that was a mixture of the compost we had delivered and compost from our bin, Darth Vader. And then I planted!

Eyes up!

I covered the potatoes and watered them gently. Now I wait! It says that the plants from these organic seed potatoes take three weeks to sprout up from the ground. Once the plants reach four to six inches, I will begin adding soil to the trench to “hill” the potatoes and create a mound to encourage the newly developing tubers to have space to develop. Here’s the illustration Prairie Wood Farm provides in their handy growing guide:

I am so curious to see what happens! I hope that they grow and thrive in this new garden bed we created. I hope that my pound and a half of organic seed potatoes turns into a gorgeous display of flowers followed by tasty varieties of white, yellow, red, and blue potatoes. It was so much fun to get them in the mail and finally get them into the ground.

Tags: chives, cilantro, gardening, organic, potatoes, spring
Posted in The Growing Season | 4 Comments »