You can harvest ‘new’ potatoes once the potato plants start flowering. Cover them loosely with soil, adding an additional 6”. Once the visible potato plant reaches around 6-8” high, it’s time to hill your potatoes. Check your spuds at least once a day and water them when the soil is dry to about 2”. After adding dirt, water the straw bed thoroughly. This is especially important for potatoes, since being exposed to light too early can make them turn green. Leave the rest to continue growing. What’s your favorite way to eat potatoes? Do not let it dry. The idea is to give the potatoes plenty of room in the dirt to grow those delicious tubers we all know and love. Originally from upstate NY, I’m now an honorary Pennsylvanian, having lived here for the past 12 years. Hill the plants when they’re about 6-8 inches (15-20cm) high. It’s also a good idea to set buckets up on a couple of 2x4s rather than directly on the ground. You can just toss them in the dirt, but doing it this way will add a couple of weeks to your time to harvest. The space needed for a row or two in a home can be prohibitive. Hilling is an agricultural technique that involves piling up soil around the base of a plant as it grows. Mix about ¼ cup of bone meal and 1/8 cup of Epsom salt into the last 6” of dirt, this way, the fertilizer will soak down where it’s needed most each time you water. You may need to water twice a day under these conditions. If potatoes are grown in the ground, in rows, you simply use a hoe or shovel to hill the surrounding soil up around the plants. One potato plant can produce around ten potatoes. And dad was organic, long before it became the popular buzzword that it is today. I have potatoes planted in several large containers. Growing potatoes is a lot different than growing other root crops like carrots or beets, where you pull up one veggie per plant. Well, we can help you out there too. Potatoes produce beneath the soil and require plenty of space to grow and spread out. But I’m okay with never revisiting the adventure that is using an outhouse in the middle of January. {"smallUrl":"https:\/\/www.wikihow.com\/images\/thumb\/b\/b7\/Hill-Potatoes-Step-1.jpg\/v4-460px-Hill-Potatoes-Step-1.jpg","bigUrl":"\/images\/thumb\/b\/b7\/Hill-Potatoes-Step-1.jpg\/aid8970973-v4-728px-Hill-Potatoes-Step-1.jpg","smallWidth":460,"smallHeight":345,"bigWidth":728,"bigHeight":546,"licensing":"

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\n<\/p><\/div>"}. Not only is this an easy process, it is also one of the most rewarding. Or, you can also create your own mix using a 1:1:1 ratio of gardening soil, peat moss, and compost. And then fertilize them regularly throughout the growing season. But do not let it soak either! Check out 5 Ways to Store Potatoes So They Last for Months. Hilling potatoes is exactly like it sounds – you’re mounding soil or another growing medium around the exposed plant. Because you’ll be watering the soil more frequently, you’ll be washing nutrients out quicker than if you were growing potatoes in the ground. Did you know you can read expert answers for this article? Be careful not to break the plants while doing this. The potatoes will produce chlorophyll (that’s the green) and solanine, which can cause paralysis if you ingest enough. If you do not have a container, you can also grow it in a polybag. First earlies – such as the Yukon Gold (which I’m planting here), take around 10-12 weeks. Growing potatoes in containers is a great idea if a home gardener is short on space. If you really can’t stand to see another ad again, then please consider supporting our work with a contribution to wikiHow. It’s pretty easy to get free food-safe 5-gallon buckets to use for container gardening. Once the visible potato plant reaches around 6-8” high, it’s time to hill your potatoes. Check your containers regularly and cover any potatoes that decide to pop up close to the surface. You should have a better idea of what’s going on below the dirt. In a garden, potatoes require generous spacing and enough soil for “hilling” (periodically mounding soil around all but the tops of the potato vines; encourages tuber production). Luckily, I didn’t add the straw until after we had a week-long deluge. Hilling potatoes is exactly like it sounds – you’re mounding soil or another growing medium around the exposed plant. 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