Potatoes

Potatoes are a root vegetable and part of the nightshade family of plants, along with tomatoes, eggplant, and peppers. This delicious starchy tuber has been cultivated for thousands of years and is an important food staple around the world. There are thousands of different varieties of potatoes that come in many different colors, shapes and sizes. This versatile spud is great in soups and it can be baked, fried, boiled, and steamed. Potatoes are an easy vegetable to grow with abundant harvests. They are so easy that astronauts even grew them in space, so try growing some potatoes in your vegetable garden.

Plant potatoes a few weeks after the last frost. Make sure to use certified seed potatoes that are disease free. Pick a spot in full sun that is loose, well drained and amend the soil with a healthy amount of compost and well rotted manure. Potatoes do best in a soil with a PH of around 6 - 6.5. If your soil is too alkaline, adding some sulfur when preparing the beds can really help these spuds. Make a trench and plant the tubers 3-4" (7.5-10cm) deep and Spacing potatoes 1' (30cm) apart. Water consistently every 4-5 days, increasing to every 2-3 days when flowers appear. Stop watering around 2-4 weeks before harvesting potatoes.

For more on growing potatoes in the vegetable garden watch this video on How to Plant Potatoes.

The University of Maine Cooperative Extension is a good resource for information on growing potatoes in the vegetable garden, or we recommend checking out this link from the University of Idaho for even more gardening tips.