How To Grow Potatoes
Want To Know How To Grow Potatoes?
Many never even consider how to grow potatoes, as they tend to be quite cheap to purchase. They are also a bit cleaner when picked up from the market as opposed to picking them out of the ground, as processed potatoes undergo a specialized scrub before being packaged. This is done without water, as moisture on the potato promotes mold and decay. If you are learning how to grow potatoes, you will need to be prepared with proper harvesting and storage techniques as well. Growing them is usually the easy part, but there is no sense in going through this process only to have them go to waste. The first step that you will need to achieve will be the proper soil amount and hygiene. Depending on how many mounds of potatoes you need, you will want a nice flat plot of well drained soil to begin your planting process.
Information on how to grow potatoes is as follows: these tubers enjoy plenty of room to grow, and they need to be started in an area where the chance of drowning is not an issue. Too much moisture, as mentioned, can spell disaster for this bulbous delectable. A nice mix of sand and fine stone within your low acidity soil will do just fine for this purpose. Depending upon which strain of potatoes you wish to grow, each plant can yield from three to fifteen potatoes. You will, therefore, want to give each plant at least a one foot radius in which to mature. When the plants or bulb seeds are initially planted, you can allow the soil to lay flat. As the plant begins to take strong root, however, you will want to begin mounting the soil around each one. As the potatoes begin to grow, they will travel the road of least resistance, which usually brings them to the surface of the soil. Mounding the plants will keep the potatoes below the ground.
You have only just begun to learn how to grow potatoes, as there are many things that must be done before they make it to the dinner table. Following the previous steps should have brought you quite far along in the process, and before long you will be enjoying fresh potatoes from your own garden. The entire potato growing process takes about six months, and in the standard four season climates this should mean planting in late May and harvest by early October. Your climatic variances may affect this projected time frame, and you can find a scale based upon this information on the packaging of your potato seed. Good luck with gardening ventures, and don’t forget to learn about harvest and storage.