Grow your own Potatoes

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Kitchen gardening

Grow your own Potatoes

Potatoes are very easy to grow in your garden, and if you plant a new batch every few weeks, you’ll have a steady supply of these nutritious, versatile vegetables in the months ahead. The potato plant produces attractive flowers which eventually die back when the tubers are ready to be harvested.

Step-by-step guide to growing your own potatoes

  • Go to your local grocery store and choose a few healthy-looking potatoes with “eyes”. These will become your “seed potatoes”, which are planted to produce more tubers.
  • Plant seed potatoes in well composted soil, 10cm deep and 30cm apart. Water well.
  • Your potato plants will take about 1-3 weeks to sprout. When the sprouts are about 30cm high, you need to start “earthing up” around the stems of the plant. Earthing up involves adding more soil around the stems of the plant to prevent the tubers from being exposed to light and turning green.
  • Water your potato plants once a week.
  • Potato plants will usually start to bloom after about 8 weeks. Wait until the flowers have died back before harvesting your potatoes from beneath the soil. It’s best to wait for about 2 weeks after the flowers die back as this enables the potatoes to grow nice and big, as they are no longer competing with the flowers for nutrients.
  • After harvesting, potatoes should be stored in a paper bag in a cool, dark, dry place. They will keep for about 2 weeks when stored in this manner.

Did you know? Potatoes are an excellent source of vitamin C, potassium and vitamin B6.

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