Homegrown Potatoes

Growing potatoes is easier than you think!

Homegrown Rosy red fingerlings fresh from the garden! Dirt doesn’t cling to them like it does with the Yukon Gems.

I’d never thought of growing potatoes until I visited my family in Denver and my green-thumb sister-in-law, Mirna, showed me how. Her homegrown potatoes were finished for the season in October, and I helped her dig them up before the first frost. The yield amazed me—at least five pounds. Right then and there, determination set in to give the mighty spud a try.

This is how the potatoes come packaged from Peaceful Valley.

My research led me to Peaceful Valley, an online garden shop specializing in organic tubers, seeds, and trees. I purchased “seed” potatoes from them after learning that grocery store potatoes are often treated to prevent sprouting. Peaceful Valley provides excellent online videos with step-by-step instructions for cutting the eyes and letting them dry for a day to harden the exposed skin. This prevents the moist surface from creating mildew.

I used two extra bags of soil for hilling the potatoes.

Into the ground they went. I waited and waited. It must have been four weeks before I saw the first green leaves emerge. To protect them from sun exposure, you use a technique called “hilling.” As soon as leaves arrive, you make a hill of dirt around the base and keep them as far underground as possible. I hilled my plants many times as they grew tall. When the leaves dry out and wilt, the potatoes are ready to harvest. At first, I dug up a few here and there to eat that night. Most of the potatoes I planted were Red Thumb Fingerling and French Fingerling. The names accurately reflect the small, dusty red, oblong potatoes that came out of the ground, looking like they’ve just been to the beauty parlor – all cleaned up! Their creamy richness lent themselves to simple boiling and steaming to eat with salt and butter.

These are the larger Yukon Gems. Buttery!

It’s now late spring, and my appetite for bright summer veggies has kicked in. Even though I relished my every-other-day harvesting, I dug up all the potatoes to make room for squash, cucumbers, poblanos, and cantaloupes. I love the activity of a treasure hunt, and as I turn the dirt, it’s like magic as potatoes appear on my shovel. The entire raised bed gifted me with a yield of around 15 pounds! As I crumbled the soil to prepare it for its next visitors, my fingers combed through the dirt to find at least 30 more potatoes, comfortably tucked into their warm home, still hiding from me.

Summer squash now occupies the potato patch.

What am I going to do with all these potatoes? Needing a cool place to store them, I had an idea: Put the spuds in my wine cooler to keep them from sprouting. San Diego’s climate is not conducive to storing dry produce. I hope this works! Let me know about your homegrown potato-planting experience and how you keep them fresh.

“I only want to live in peace, plant potatoes and dream!”

― Tove Jansson, Moomin: The Complete Tove Jansson Comic Strip, Vol. 1

Ciao for now,