OK, since we’re talking about seed potatoes, let’s talk potato seed prep!
If you’re planting “whole” seed potatoes, there’s pretty much nothing you have to do. Just throw the seed potato in the ground and up will come a potato plant. The orientation you plant them in really doesn’t matter. The plant knows which way is up and we promise you, it’ll figure it out without your help.
If you need to make those seed potatoes go a bit further? You can cut them up into multiple pieces, each piece can act as a seed potato. The key is that each piece has an “eye” (the growing thing coming out of the potato) as this is what will be producing your potato plant. In general, you can halve them, third them or quarter them. Should you have substantial, chonky seed potatoes, you might be able to get even more pieces. You don’t need to achieve “even” cutting, just make sure that each piece has an eye and at least a bit of potato to help keep things moist and provide initial nutrition to the seed.
Should you decide to cut up your seed potatoes, it’s important to air dry them for 24-48 hours prior to planting. This will help “cure” the exposed flesh, which will aid in preventing the seed potato from rotting under the soil.
Oh, and just like with whole seed potatoes, the plant will figure out which was is up. You can literally just toss them in the ground and the plant will figure things out, regardless of how the seed potato lands!
You might have seed potatoes with short eyes, like those in this photo. Sometimes you have ridiculously long, gangly eyes growing from them. In the latter case, the growing bits can either be above or below the soil when you sow, it doesn’t matter. Again, the seed will figure out how to grow.
Curiously, there’s actually been studies on whether planting whole or cut-up seed potatoes is “better” so to speak. In general, the research is completely and evenly mixed. There’s some that say cutting yields some benefit and others that say it makes no difference at all. We’re in the latter camp, for what its worth. We rarely cut our seed stock anyhow since we usually have more than enough.
Potatoes often take a somewhat unique growing technique compared to most plants, but there’s a lot of flexibility with it. In general, you want to be able to cover them with about 12 inches of soil, but not all at once. It’s a good idea to initially cover them with about 6 inches of soil. Once the plant pokes through, bury them again with another six inches of soil, for a total of around twelve(ish) inches. Containers are great, in ground will work, compost piles are great and hay bales will work, too. Potatoes are quite forgiving and are usually very easy to grow.
The one thing that isn’t true is the “infinite potato hack” thing where you just continue to bury your potato plants in soil. The truth is, only a certain lower portion of the plant will produce potatoes. Doing this will just make it a heck of a lot more work for you to harvest those potatoes. Everything you see on the internet isn’t true!
We’ll have more to say about potatoes as the season progresses. This is one of those crops that really charmed us into growing them, so much that they’ve become a staple of our northern gardens!
