Growing Potatoes in Your Victory Garden

Who doesn’t love a freshly baked potato loaded with butter, cheese, sour cream, and bacon bits! (No chives for me, please) So delicious! It’s one of my favorite meals. Hands down, my best tasting potatoes come from my Victory Garden.
With the right amount of sun, a loose, slightly acidic soil, and some cool weather, you can have that potato along with a lot more on your dinner table throughout the year. High in potassium, fiber, and Vitamin C, the average white potato has only 147 calories if you don’t load it down with all that good stuff mentioned above. A member of the nightshade family, along with tomatoes and eggplant, it is one of the world’s most abundant food crops.

When and where to plant

If you’re in the south where the ground doesn’t freeze in the winter, you can plant potatoes in the fall. Planted after other vegetables are harvested, they can stay in the ground throughout the winter for early spring harvesting.
In many areas, including mine, you can plant in July and August for a fall-ish harvest. Just determine your area’s first freeze date (https://www.almanac.com/gardening/frostdates)
and count back 110 days for your planting date.
I want to plant some of the colorful fingerling potatoes in my Victory Garden. They are delicious in many dishes, but my family loves when I boil them and finish with sea salt, pepper, rosemary and of course butter! Sometimes I get fancy and add Parmesan cheese. It’s a quick, versatile dish and they are so creamy and tasty. What’s great about growing spuds is it only takes 90 days to mature. The average date of the first frost in my planting zone is November 1, so if I count back 90 days from then, I need to plant my seed fingerlings by late August.
Even if you don’t have garden space, you can grow potatoes in containers in a sunny location. Amazon has all kinds of potato-growing containers you can purchase. But even a burlap bag, a plastic storage bin or cardboard box will work. I have an old 55 gallon trash bin that I put drainage holes in the bottom. A bonus is that it has wheels and it’s easy to move even after it gets full.
I decided to try grow bags as well this year. I found the ANPHSIN 4-Pack 10 Gallon Garden Potato Grow Bags on Amazon Prime for $22.99 (I’m a Prime member so free shipping- woo! hoo!). Amazon has a lot to choose from, and most have excellent customer ratings.

Buying seed potatoes

Then I started checking on where to buy seed potatoes. Not as easy as grow bag shopping because I found that most seed companies sell seed potatoes only in the spring, including my local feed and seed center. I did find a variety of fingerling seed potatoes at BestSeedsOnline.com and placed an order. They are in The Netherlands, so it will take several weeks before I get them, but since I won’t plant in my Victory Garden until August, it worked out fine. Other sites’ ratings had only one or two stars, so I decided against ordering from them.
My family also loves Yukon Gold potatoes. I could not find them and learned that if you want a fall crop of potatoes, it’s best to make arrangements with a grower during spring planting time. With that, I may have to wait until next year to plant for a fall harvest. If I do find some, however, they have a maturity period of 120 days, so I will have to plant at least by July 1. The rule of thumb is to plant two weeks before the last freeze in your area.
My dependable friend, “The Old Farmer’s Almanac,” recommends letting your soil tell you when to plant. It should be at least 50°F (10°C) and not too wet. Your potatoes need at least six hours of sun a day and need some space to grow – three feet between rows and planted 12 to 14 inches apart.
One thing to remember is that using the shriveling up potatoes you bought from the grocery store is not going to work. That’s because they have most likely been sprayed with a growth retardant to keep them from sprouting. Besides, they can cause potato disease in your soil, NOT something you want to deal with. Yes, you can find all kinds of information on the Internet about it, but reputable gardening websites advise against it. However, if you buy organic potatoes, that is a different story (read about easily confused garden terms, including organic here: https://victorygardengal.com/5-terms-you-need-to-know-for-your-victory-garden/).

How to plant potatoes

There is a lot of useful information on the Internet about how to plant potatoes. Basically, you want to make sure your Victory Garden soil has lots of good compost mixed into it, especially if you have grown other crops there and they used up all the nutrients. Potatoes are planted in trenches dug six inches wide and between 8 to 10 inches deep, tapering to three inches at the bottom. (My favorite way to plant is in containers)
Before it’s time to plant, be sure to watch that your potatoes are sprouting. If not, put each one in a small container (for my fingerlings, I use egg cartons) and make sure you place them with the most of the eyes facing upward. Place them in a warm spot – about 70˚F (21˚C) – and let them sprout. This is called “chitting” or pre-sprouting, and I learned that it promises a more abundant crop but also that it can take up to four weeks, so you really have to plan ahead. This article explains in more detail – https://growagoodlife.com/chitting-potatoes/
So after chitting, you have delicate green or red sprouts, depending on the type of potato you are planting. You want to cut the potato so that you have two to three sprouts on each piece. They will need to cure for two days before planting. If you bought just the seeds (like me), you would skip this step.
Plant your seed potatoes and cover them with three to four inches of dirt and compost. As they begin to sprout a few days later, you want to begin “hilling” them: cover them with more of your soil and compost, leaving the sprouts (tops) exposed. After a few weeks add another four to five inches of soil. As they grow to about eight inches, add more soil. At this point, you want to put down organic mulch to keep weeds down and moisture in.
When I grow potatoes in my containers, I often have to add more dirt and mulch twice a week! I think this is almost as fun as harvesting – watching them grow up so fast is amazing, plus your potatoes will bud all along the area you bury – which means more to eat (or share)!
Hilling is necessary to keep the growing potatoes from getting sun, which can cause them to turn green and basically become uneatable. An article in “The Old Farmer’s Almanac” has not only excellent instructions on all potato planting aspects but also a very helpful video: https://www.almanac.com/plant/potatoes.

For my grow bags and trash bin, we recently had some topsoil delivered, so I will mix compost with it in a wheelbarrow so that I have 60% soil and 40% compost. You will need to roll the grow bags down so that you start with only about four inches of soil. Then place the seed potatoes about 6 inches apart before adding another three inches of soil mixture. You will continue this process until you unroll the whole bag and you’ve filled it with dirt to the top of the bag (or container). Another bonus from growing in containers is NO WEEDING- YAY!
Watering is important. You want to water enough so that it reaches the bottom of your bag, but not so much that your soil gets waterlogged. During hot summer days, daily watering may be necessary. If they look wilted – then water! When the potato plants begin to wither and die, you simply empty the contents into your wheelbarrow and harvest the potatoes. Last fall we dumped ours out on a plastic tarp. After we found all the potatoes I was able to put my dirt back in my compost pile and reuse it (see how easy it is to compost here: https://victorygardengal.com/4-easy-steps-to-starting-a-compost-for-your-victory-garden/ ).
With all the unsettledness in the world right now, it’s nice to know seed, time, and harvest still has the same rhythm. When I’m feeling stressed or overwhelmed, I lift my eyes up and put my hands in the dirt, and know that God and growing haven’t changed. My hope is that you will find peace and abundance, and potatoes, in your Victory Garden, too!

Happy (potato) planting!

DeeAnn

The Victory Garden Gal

References:
How to Seed Potatoes for Fall Planting By Kim Hoyum “Garden Guides” https://www.gardenguides.com/104956-seed-potatoes-fall-planting.html
When Should I Plant Fall Potatoes? By Anna Aronson Hunker.com https://www.hunker.com/13407050/when-should-i-plant-fall-potatoes
When to Plant Potatoes “Farming in My Backyard” https://farmingmybackyard.com/when-to-plant-potatoes/
Grow Bags for Potatoes: Tips for Growing Potatoes in a Bag By Bonnie L. Grant “Gardening Know How” https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/edible/vegetables/potato/growing-potatoes-in-bags.htm
Chitting Potatoes Gives Them a Head Start “Grow a Good Life” https://growagoodlife.com/chitting-potatoes/