Planting and harvesting potatoes
You can plant potatoes in your garden from April and then, depending on the variety, harvest from early summer to autumn. Before doing this, you should pre-germinate the seed potatoes in order to achieve a good harvest.
How to prepare the potatoes
- Around potatoes To plant in your own garden, it is best to only use the seed or seed potatoes. In theory, you could use ordinary supermarket potatoes, but these have often been treated to prevent them from sprouting.
- Before you plant your potatoes, they should have sprouted. To do this, place the seed potatoes side by side in a bright room with a temperature between 10 ° and 15 ° C. There will be germs on the potatoes.
- When planting later, keep in mind that these germs should always point upwards.
How to plant and care properly
- You can only plant potatoes in your garden from April, because they do not tolerate sub-zero temperatures. They grow in any normal garden soil that should be rich in nutrients. You can do this in autumn compost work into the ground.
- To plant the potatoes, dig furrows that should be twice as deep as your potatoes are thick. Place the potatoes in these furrows at a distance of 30 to 40 centimeters and cover them with soil. If you are planting several rows of potatoes, leave a space of at least half a meter between each row.
- As the green of the potatoes grows in height, pile up a little bit of soil again and again, this will cause more tubers to form in the upper area.
- Water your potatoes during periods of prolonged drought. Make sure, however, not to moisten the leaves, as this can easily lead to late blight and brown rot.
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Harvesting the different varieties
- When you can harvest your potatoes depends on the variety you planted. A distinction is made between early, medium-early and late varieties.
- You can harvest the early varieties from June, the mid-early varieties from July and the late varieties from August. If you want to store part of your harvest as a winter supply, the late varieties are best for this.
- You can harvest your potatoes when the green has withered, turned dry, and turned yellow. With the new potatoes, however, you can start as soon as the leaves begin to turn yellow. It is best to use a digging fork or fork to dig up the potatoes.
- If you plan to store your potatoes, the first thing to do is to let them dry off by laying them out on a paved surface. Your harvest will last the longest in a dry and well-ventilated cellar at around 5 ° C in the tried and tested potato box.
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