Home Grown Potatoes

Growing Potatoes at Home

Learning how to grow potatoes at home is very straight forward and very easy. It will need a bit of effort and elbow grease but the benefits will repay you many times over.

When you grow potatoes at home you have access to many more varieties than you would if you just wanted to buy them from the supermarket.

With a bit of thought and forward planning, you can have access to lovely, very fresh potatoes for many months throughout the year and knowing that you achieved it by your own hand will make your heart swell with pride.

Traditionally, growing potatoes at home has involved the digging of large areas of garden to make space for the ridges and furrows that you usually associate with potato growing. Whilst it has to be said that you will probably get a larger crop when you devote a larger area to your potato growing, it is perfectly possible and in some cases more practical, to grow them in containers, tub and the numerous other devices available on the gardening market today.

I, personally have used both methods, and they both have their benefits. Growing potatoes in tubs is just so easy. If it’s going to be frosty, you can just drag them into the shed. They are a bit more interesting when it comes to getting the children to show an interest and the weeding and watering is just so quick and easy, especially when you have them located up near the house. This also means you can easily avoid having your potato pots inadvertently placed in low lying frost prone areas in the spring.

When you grow your potatoes in the ground, there’s just something so country garden about the whole look of it. I plant mine in raised beds. This again helps with the weeding, and maintaining a good quality of soil whereby it’s easy to dig in plenty of manure to provide the best balance of nutrients to ensure a good crop. It is harder work, but generally you will harvest a bigger yield, and generally by having more space you can try out different varieties and have them ripe for harvesting at different times, if you do your scheduling properly.

The scheduling of your home grown potatoes isn’t difficult, you just need to sit down with a pencil and paper and based upon the length of times it takes for the different types to mature, just work backwards and you can find out when you need to plant the relevant seed potatoes.

Earlies will take about 15-16 weeks to mature and will be ready about mid June-July.

Second Earlies will take about 16-17 weeks to mature and will be ready from June through till August.

Maincrop potatoes will be ripe anytime from August until end of September or later. They generally take 18-20 weeks until they’re ready and these potatoes are the best ones for storing into the autumn.

So there you are; home grown potatoes are easy to do, versatile, healthy and very impressive when you look up the garden and see the results of your efforts!