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About the end of March of 2008, I discover my bag of white potaoes that I'd purchased from the grocery store a week before had produced sprouts or eyes. There were at least three or four seed eyes on each potato. I'm a big fanatic on gardening so I thought I'd try and produce a few more potatoes from these seed eyes and see how well it would work for me. Not exactly sure if I was wasting my time or not, as I didn't know if potatoes purchased from a grocer would even produce a plant. I've heard that potatoes from a grocery store is chemically treated so that they won't reproduce. Determined to find out, I set out to experiment.

First, I cut the sprouts from the potatoes leaving a half inch of thickness of the white meat from the potato under the seed eye, making my cuts almost 2 inches in diameter around the eye. My sprouting eyes were now ready to plant. I've read that it's good to let the eyes dry about twenty four hours before planting but I just didn't see the reason in that. My thoughts are that potatoes need moisture to grow so why dry the seed eyes. Straight to the garden I went with my seeds, anxious to get potatoes growing.

I tilled a row in my garden about 14 foot long, then added a sprinkling of 5-10-10 garden fertilizer, about 3 cups for this length of a row and tilled again to distribute the fertilizer throughout the soil. I dug holes about twoto three inches deep and sixteen inches apart a down the row. Next I placed the eyes, looking up at me, in the separate holes. One in each hole and covering nicely with soil.

Ten days later I noticed sprouts peeking through the soil. My potatoes bushes were growing! As they grew, I watered when the soil was dry and removed any bugs and pests, disposed of them properly as I don't care to use pesticides. It took about three months for the bushes to mature and eventually they began to droop and start turning brown. I couldn't wait any longer, I had to see what was under the soil. I got out my shovel and being careful not to get too close to the bush, I began to dig. My experiment had paid off, I had grown my own white potatoes! You can't imagine how proud I was. I need to tell you that the taste of a home grown potato is much better than those purchased at a store so growing your own is very rewarding.

This year I purchased a bag of seed potatoes from our local seed store and planted them early. Potatoes are a cool weather crop so planting before the weather gets warm is good. At this moment I have about fifty large bushes growing and looking forward to a good harvest soon.

Learn more about this author, Gloria Jones.
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