by Jeannine Anderson

Created on: May 10, 2011   Last Updated: May 12, 2011

To plant a potato patch from one potato requires a little time, a good knife, a shallow box and good eyes.  Your eyes should be good to prevent cutting yourself with the knife, but it’s the potato’s eyes we’re really talking about here!  Those little buds that pop up from the skin of the potato are the beginning of a new potato plant. 

With a clean, sharp knife, cut the potato up into pieces with at least one eye intact on each piece.  Place them in a shallow box or tray and allow them to dry off.  This will only take from several hours to overnight, depending on the ambient humidity.  Allowing the potato pieces to cure in this way will help to prevent them from rotting in the ground before the plants can become established.  Potatoes rely on some of the moisture and nutrient left in that little piece of potato to get started, so if your piece rots before the plant can establish some roots, you’ll lose your spuds.

Once your potato pieces have properly dried, you can plant them in a shallow trench, covering them with enough soil to provide about 1 to 1 ½ inches on top to start.  Place the pieces about 8-10 inches apart.  As time goes on and your potato plants begin to grow, you’ll hill them up with several more inches of soil at a time to provide covered growing space for the tubers below.  Potatoes grow out, and even up, from the original piece that was planted, so the gardener must hill several times throughout the growing season to ensure the potatoes stay under ground until harvest time.  Potatoes exposed to sunlight turn green, making them bitter tasting and increasing the level of toxins that naturally occur in their flesh.  Those toxins are eliminated during cooking, but green potatoes still don’t taste very good compared to properly grown potatoes.

Potatoes require very little from the soil in which they are grown, preferring loose, loamy soils that drain well.  When planting potatoes the gardener doesn’t need to add heavy amendments to the soil, as potatoes do best in poorer soil than in rich soil.  Where soils are heavy and full of clay potatoes will still grow, but their size and shape will be significantly affected by the soil.  The advantage to heavier soils is that you can “dry farm” your potatoes, meaning you will not need to water much, if at all. The rain will provide enough moisture through most of the growing season with the soil holding on to it for the plants to take up as they need.

Potatoes are the original buried treasure, and with one potato, you’ve got what you need to grow many potato plants.  Packed with vitamins, minerals and proteins this staple food crop has been sustaining life for thousands of years.  Potatoes will grow in a wide range of soil types and pH levels, making them one of the easiest food crops for the home gardener. 

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