When you're buying the best seed potatoes on the market, you want to follow best practices! Anna Helmer of Helmer's Organic Farm offers up some advice to get a bumper crop.
Tips & Tricks
- Store potatoes in a cool, dark place until planting time, when the soil has warmed up to around 12°C.
- They might sprout, turn green, wrinkle, and soften before you are ready to plant. This is to be expected and they will grow.
- Prepare the bed by shoveling to create nice loose soil. They will grow in just about anything though, as long as the seed piece is completely covered either by dirt or sod.
- Plant in rows that are 2-3’ apart which gives plenty of room for hilling through the growing season.
- Plant in a shallow trench, sow seed at 6” to 12” or more, and cover with soil, making a low hill.
- Begin hilling as soon as the first sprouts break the ground. Keep pulling the soil up around the plants as they grow.
- Potatoes like the soil to be moist but not soaking.
- They like lots of organic matter but not to be over fertilized. We use NO fertilizers or amendments on our fields, relying instead on cover crops and long rotations.