Good Sun, Drainage Keep Spuds From Being Duds

A potato is not just a potato in the gardening world. Besides the typical brown russet, there are 800 other varieties.

Potatoes for home growing vary in color, texture, flavor, size and even shape.

Potatoes like ‘German Butterball’ have golden skin and a buttery taste, while ‘Red Gold’ has red skin and uniquely flavored flesh.

There are also purple, pink and blue potatoes and oddly shaped ones like ‘Russian Banana,’ which is a yellow fingerling potato shaped like a banana.

Potatoes can be planted now through January and will yield a crop in two to four months, depending on the variety you plant. You can harvest small new potatoes even earlier.

Most nurseries don’t carry seed potatoes until January, but you can get seed potatoes through mail-order now. A pound of seed potatoes produces 25 to 50 pounds of potatoes, says Greg Anthony, a partner with Ronniger’s Seed and Potato Co. in Ellensburg, Wash. This mail-order operation carries a variety of disease-free potatoes that have been specially grown for planting.

To have luck growing potatoes, keep the following tips in mind:

* Choose a planting site in full sun that has excellent drainage. Like all root crops, potatoes will rot in wet soil. Check drainage in an area by digging a 1-foot hole and filling it with water until it will no longer drain. Then leave it for 12 hours.

When you go back and check, it should have drained. If not, find another planting site.

* Lighten up the soil in the planting site by adding bagged or homemade compost. Also mix in peat moss, which will acidify the soil.

* Pre-sprout your seed potatoes when you get them by placing them outdoors in a warm location that gets a little sun. (Pre-sprouting will cause them to grow and produce more quickly.)

* Once they’ve sprouted, cut large potatoes into pieces, leaving at least one sprout. Plant each piece with the sprout sticking up at 8- to 12-inch intervals in a shallow trench that is about 6 to 8 inches deep.

Cover the potatoes with 3 to 4 inches of soil. When green stems appear and are 8 inches high, gently cover them with soil, until just 4 inches of stem is exposed. This hilling should be done a total of three times at two-week intervals, which will allow many potatoes to form on a series of underground stems.

* Begin harvesting small, tender new potatoes when the plant has blossoms. To harvest full-size potatoes, wait until the plant has died back. Then let the potatoes sit in the ground for two to four weeks, which will allow their skins to thicken so they can be stored once harvested.

* Potatoes are tomato relatives, reaching 3 feet tall and sprawling. If space is limited, plant in a wire cage in the garden, or in a large container.

To plant in a wire cage, create a cylinder of chicken wire that is 18 by 18 at the base and 20 to 30 inches tall and place on prepared soil.

Put in 8 inches of amended soil and plant five seed potatoes 4 inches deep. When the potato foliage grows 8 inches, cover it by one-third. As the plant grows, repeat this procedure until you reach 5 inches from the top of the cage.

Use this same method for growing in containers, stopping 4 or 5 inches from the top of the container. For the best results, the pot should be at least 26 to 28 inches.

* Fertilize every two weeks before potatoes start blooming with a foliar fertilizer of fish emulsion and liquid seaweed. Good foliage growth leads to plentiful, large potatoes.

* Don’t over-water potatoes. They should remain on the dry side. Water about once a week when there is no rain.

* Keep the area around potatoes well-weeded, as weeds will steal moisture from the potatoes.

* Watch for destructive Colorado potato beetles, which are black-, yellow- and orange-striped insects that can eat all your potato foliage and ruin your crop.

Ronniger’s Seed and Potato Co. offers a free catalog, (800) 846-6178.