Friday, April 18, 2014

How to Plant Perfect Potatoes

Planting potatoes in Minnesota is full of tradition and technique. It is traditional to plant the first crop on Good Friday. Our best technique is to...


plant in a trench about 6 inches apart. You would normally plant about 18 inches apart. but we like to crowd the plants to keep them small. Our best markets are for baby potatoes. I like to use compost in the trench as the main fertilizer source. It attracts earth worms to the rows which convert the organic matter in the compost into a great food source for the potatoes. The worms also clean up the old potato seed pieces. Good mature compost also fends off soil born diseases that affect the potatoes. Potatoes grown this was are very bright and smooth.

It takes about 60 days for the earliest potato varieties to be ready to harvest. We space planting so we have a new row to harvest every two weeks. We harvest half of a row each week.

There is nothing like the flavor of fresh potatoes and they are typically ready about the same time as peas.

Peas and potatoes baby!

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