Growing potatoes was such an exciting part of my gardening learning experience this summer! I knew very little about growing them so I was very intimidated by the thought of it, but I tried it anyways and so happy that I did!
I have learned a few important things, so I’d like to share this with you and what I’ve learned. I knew nothing about growing them so I relied heavily on the resources online and through talking to a few family members who have grown them for some knowledge.
Some of the first articles on growing potatoes mentioned that you should hill them. I had no reason to question this, so the first thing I did was bought several bags of soil so that I had a steady supply, then I realized that there was no way that I would be able to continue hilling up soil around the bases and I was running out of room in my flower bed so that is when I started to question it and looked around online for more information on the topic and why I needs to do it in the first place.
I also looked into other ways to cover the bases and some people said straw and wood chips and then I started to run into more Information about why you don’t want to add straw because it would kill your crops and it just seemed like it was getting too complicated, but I know that when you do anything you are going to always run into people who do things differently or have their own opinions.
That is when I found Luke from MiGardener on YouTube and he talked about some common misconceptions on growing potatoes, and he went over the hilling myth and I was so relieved that I could just stop doing this and relax. I did not know that potatoes actually grow deep so there is no way that they would start popping up out of the dirt, lol! It’s silly to think about now and how much stress this caused me to feel.
Im so thankful for that information because it changed everything for me. I was able to finally enjoy the process of growing potatoes and for a change and it made sense.
Another issue that I ran into was that some of the leaves on part of the crop was starting to turn rusty and spotty and this did not seem like a good thing to me and found that it could possibly be potato blight or another disease. This made me sad because my entire crop could fail. I thought about how real potato farmers must feel and what they go through when this happens because it’s on such a large scale and is their livelihood and they depend on it for survival. I suddenly had so much compassion for people who do this as a way of life.
I did as much as I could to avoid top watering of the leaves and prevent the spread of whatever it was, and also started to remove some of the leaves and disposing of them. I read articles that said that you should burn the leaves and then I questioned if removing the leaves was bad and actually I found that removing them could be better for the formation of the tubers and sends the energy down underground. Another thing that I noticed was that after some of the first blossoms I saw some cut marks on them and they would drop off, but I didn’t worry too much about that since I read that removing the blossoms could potentially create a positive thing for the tuber development.
It’s just amazing at the information that is available out there and this has been such a huge help in my journey in gardening. I do a lot by feel and intuition but also it makes me happy that others are available to share what knowledge they have as well. Overall I am so happy with my crop of potatoes this year and how easy it was once I had better knowledge. I will definitely be growing again next year! I was able to weigh my harvest on a scale and it came to just under 25 pounds!
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