Growing Potatoes * Your favourite kitchen vegetable is easy to grow,
* Choose home grow potatoes to suite your cooking style,
* Discover several growing methods for large & small spaces.

Growing potatoes at home gives you a dependable bulk crop that you can store over winter. But also, when they become expensive to buy, your garden helps you serve fresh 'new' potatoes, not to mention attractive and unusual varieties. Click to get started with potatoes.

So whether you're a traditional gardener who wants to feed the family or you have a small patio or paved yard available, you'll find that growing potatoes is highly rewarding and productive. Indeed it has become an exemplar of healthy eating and self-sufficiency.

How Do You Like Your Spuds?

Grow Potatoes
Today

> Buy Seed Potato
> Grow Bags & Tubs
> Organic Fertilizer

Feed The Family
Tomorrow

There's a huge variety of seed potatoes available for home growers to put you in control... Your cooking style, your select flavour, your garden earth, plus...
the fresh and organic quality of home-grown spuds. See below to find loads of varieties and suitable methods of growing potatoes at home...

This page has information on choosing a site, preparing the soil, potato crop rotation for organic gardeners, plus more pages on:

  -   potato varieties   -
  -   potato grow bags, tubs & potato barrels   -
  -   no-dig raised bed potatoes   -
  -   chitting, planting & earthing up   -
  -   the value of certified seed potatoes   -
  -   the potato plant & how it grows   -
  -   reclaiming your garden with potatoes   -
  -   harvesting potatoes   -
AND

Home Guard is a compact growing potato variety

Choose a Method of Growing Potatoes to
Suite Your Garden and Your Needs

Check the planting season for: U.K. potatoes
- and U.S.A. potato gardeners

on these links.

You want the earliest 'new' potatoes fresh for summer salads,
You only have a patio, paved yard, or balcony to grow in,

Try the potato tubs and barrels as explained here.
You want to grow clean unblemished prize winning potato tubers,
Click here to grow perfect potatoes.
You want to pick fresh potatoes for Christmas roast dinner,

Learn More On
the-organic-gardener.com
> Buy Seed Potato
> Grow Bags & Tubs
> Organic Fertilizer

No problem see potato bins again.
You love potatoes all year around,
Why not combine growing earlies, second earlies, maincrop, and late season potatoes.
You want a substantial potato crop to put in store,
Try the traditional potato growing methods explained here.
You want large potatoes specially for baking,
Discover how to get more from traditional ridge and furrow.
You have new ground to break in and weeds to clear,
You can easily transform your weedy patch into a potato crop.

'Red Duke of York' - U.K. gives me early, clean, disease-free spuds
My Potato Barrel Harvest of Red Duke of York

You'd like a potato crop but... digging, hilling, and lifting potatoes is too much effort, or
your garden soil is chalky or limey, heavy or waterlogged
So get this information to help you grow spuds.
You like attractive good tasting spuds suitable for boiling, mashing, roasting, baking... ...
Check out the vast variety of potato cultivars available to grow at home.

How to Grow Potatoes at Home

You can get seed potatoes to plant and potato fertilizer on these links.

The information here is about ’Spuds’ a plant related to the tomato - and not Sweet Potatoes which are less important (in cooler climates).

Site and Soil for Growing Potatoes in Garden Soil

Choose a site that's open to plenty of light. Poor light will certainly reduce yields - and that also applies to growing in containers.

The Mantis Tiller is available in America & Europe from this link.

Potatoes grow best in a nutrient rich, moisture retentive and well-drained soil. They also prefer more acid soils with an ideal ph of 5.5. A sandy loam is supposed to be the best (but it's really just one example of what grows) and all soils can be improved.

My garden contains sandy-clay loam and potatoes grow well, but not too close to the hedge. The hedge roots dry the soil.

I'd be happy to grow my spuds in nutrient enriched organic soils, most alluvial soils, silt, or light clay loams. Gardeners should add plenty of bulk organic matter to open up more difficult clay soils.

If you have a cold wet or dry lime/chalky soil then try growing potatoes in raised beds filled with good moisture retentive compost. You'll find more here on chitting, growing potatoes in traditional rows and earthing up ridges.

Transform A Weedy Plot By Growing Potatoes.

Potatoes are traditionally used to break in new ground. Indeed a potato crop competes strongly with weeds. Previously added manure or garden compost may partly explain the improved soil condition. But I believe that the growing potato plants also improve the land.

Growing potatoes provides many opportunities to tackle weeds and improve garden soil.

Clear weeds before digging in manure,
Pick out recurring weeds again when planting,
Your potato crop competes strongly for nutrients and water and casts heavy shade on struggling weeds,
You get another chance to weed as you go about hilling up or ridging,
Finally with your reward in sight you can weed again while harvesting potatoes,

ALTERNATIVELY:

You can have weed free potatoes by growing under sheeting...
Did you know that potatoes readily form under a light excluding sheet? All you have to do is:

cut the weeds to the ground,
plant your potato tubers,
cover with a light excluding porous sheet,
make holes in sheet where potato shoots appear,

You'll get direct access - without spiking - to nice clean potatoes growing under the sheet >> Discover how to grow raised bed potatoes.
But of course you'll get a better crop if the ground has been previously manured. And I suggest growing a slug resistant variety with this method. Click here for more on potato growing in difficult places and here to find suitable potato varieties.

Crop Rotation When Growing Potatoes

Crop rotation means growing a particular crop in different soil beds year on year. Therefore 4 different soil beds are needed for a 4 year rotation. Crop rotation is vital because it helps prevent the build-up of soil disease and pests such as eel worm.

Potatoes should have the longest possible rotation and every 4th year is an absolute minimum before you grow them in the same soil again. Try 8 years if you can (an annual crop would require 8 adequate size soil beds). - But if you have a small garden you may be able to use raised beds or potato bins to help you get a potato harvest in between time. Find raised bed kits here.

Everything You Want To Know About Growing Potatoes

There's lots more information on the-organic-gardener.com about potatoes:-

Discover more about the potato plant and how it grows,
More about traditional potato growing for the garden,
Learn about certified seed potato and how it's produced,
Find more on the potato season, harvesting and storing,
And find suitable fertilizers and bagged manure to help you grow potatoes.

And much more to help you grow an organic garden.

You may be interested to know that the Home of the Organic Gardener sends out a free newsletter with gardening offers, money-off vouchers, seasonal tips on organic gardening, and the latest gardening information. You can subscribe to it below.