A local horticulturist’s guide to growing potatoes

SALT LAKE CITY — Mashed, baked, or fried … Potatoes are delicious whichever way they’re eaten. The good news is they’re also easy to grow.

If you’re thinking of growing potatoes in your home garden, KSL Greenhouse Host Taun Beddes has some tips.

 

Watch for the heat

“Potatoes are native to the Andes in South America. And they were grown for thousands of years for food, but they are adapted to a climate that has cool temperatures that don’t freeze that often,” Beddes said.

The heat is the biggest thing to watch out for when growing potatoes, especially the less common varieties. If there’s too much heat, there may not be many potatoes.

“Russet Norkotah, Russet Burbank, Red Pontiac, those sorts of potatoes do well here. They were bred either in Canada or the U.S. for our climate, and they’re more heat-tolerant,” Beddes said.

To get a good yield from the less common varieties, you may need to install a shade over them to keep them safe from the heat.

Give them extra space

Determinate potatoes can get as big as tomato plants. So when you’re making a furrow, it should be about six inches tall. You should also mix in plenty of compost.

The following steps are to split the furrow open with a shovel, put two or three seed potatoes into that split section, and then seal it over. If you do this at every foot of the furrow, the potatoes will start to come up after about a week.

“And you let those potatoes get about a foot tall, and you cover the base through the stem—the main base—with about six inches of soil, so you’re dragging more soil over the top,” Beddes said. “… Let it grow another foot and then cover it with another six inches of soil.”

According to Beddes, the furrow will be about 16 to 18 inches off the ground through which the potatoes have been growing. This will loosen the soil, making the potatoes grow more consistently and easier to dig out.

“If you just make a furrow a foot tall and plant the potatoes, they’ll grow fine. And you don’t have to, but if you want the maximum yield, that’s what you’re going to do as a home gardener,” Beddes said.

Give them a light fertilization in the summer

Lightly fertilize when the potatoes are about six weeks old. According to Beddes, this is about two cups of 20-0-0 per 100 ft.

If you overfertilize them, it will lead to a lot more green growth than actual potatoes.

Be ready to harvest in September

“You can generally start harvesting the early varieties around Labor Day, but potatoes will be ready to harvest by mid-September,” Beddes said.

Beddes recommended digging them out with a harvesting fork instead of a shovel because a shovel will likely split them in half.

You can even harvest some during the summer. All you need to do is cover the potato stems with compost.

“If it’s late July and you want baby potatoes, you can actually just stick your hand in through the compost and just kind of fish around and find the little baby potatoes and pull some off for your meal.”

The plant will continue to grow as long as you’re careful with how you treat it.

Read more from the KSL Greenhouse show:

• The dos and don’ts when planting trees in your yard
• Everything you should know about pre-emergent weed killers
• Vegetables suited to a short growing season

KSL Greenhouse is live on Saturdays from 8 a.m. to 11 a.m. Follow the show on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. You can also find more gardening info on our linktr.ee.