Planting Potatoes

I have tried potatoes a couple years but this year I have talked to a few people who have made some good suggestions so here are some suggestions for planting potatoes. Past years I have simply dug some 6-12 inch holes and then made attempts to pile dirt up on them. This year I am going to try a couple tricks.

This year I took some advice from a neighbor who plants a lot of potatoes. He digs a hole deep enough to plant the potato and then covers the potato. I did this digging a small furrow to keep them in line, planting them about 12 inches apart. Potatoes grow better the deeper you can grow the hard part is piling all that dirt on them. So this year instead of letting the plants grow really tall and then piling dirt I am going to do it as the come up one little handful at a time. The past week I have had little plants popping up and each day I have buried them with a handful of dirt this way the potatoes can grow in looser soil which produces larger potatoes. Well at least that is the first plan for planting this year.

The other plan is the Straw Method, a method which was mentioned to me by a colleague at school, and after doing some research, mainly the link above, I decided to give it a go with a small section of a row. I will make periodic posts throughout the season updating on the straw method progress.