Potatoes- simple, nutritious and unsightly; the Homo sapiens of the vegetable world.
Not that I'd ever eat people (literally, lol, or unless I was hungry); who the fuck knows where they've been? Luckily we have potatoes. They don't contract oozing green sores 'backpacking' in Thailand and nor do their screams tip off the neighbours when you're cutting them into bite size pieces.
Growing potatoes at home is possibly the easiest thing you'll ever do in the average garden as far as bang for buck is concerned, especially if you ignore the complex apocryphal bullshit that's grown up around the practice. Gardeners of yore preferred you to think they were rustic savants. I'm here to tell you they were just dicks with shovels and time on their hands like the rest of us. We really hate all the elitist obfuscation around something as basic and increasingly important as growing food at home and hope our straight agricultural dope will encourage others to reclaim the practice. You really do just chuck them in the ground and dig them up three months later. Don't overthink it.
Growing potatoes at home is possibly the easiest thing you'll ever do in the average garden as far as bang for buck is concerned, especially if you ignore the complex apocryphal bullshit that's grown up around the practice. Gardeners of yore preferred you to think they were rustic savants. I'm here to tell you they were just dicks with shovels and time on their hands like the rest of us. We really hate all the elitist obfuscation around something as basic and increasingly important as growing food at home and hope our straight agricultural dope will encourage others to reclaim the practice. You really do just chuck them in the ground and dig them up three months later. Don't overthink it.
 | < First, find some potatoes. We enjoy quite a wide range of old and new varieties here in NZ, and we've grown around a dozen or so ourselves. This year we're going with (L2R)- random yellow from the supermarket since they were already beginning to sprout; Agria, a floury white main cropper, and Purple Heart, a waxy purple allrounder. |
Some supermarket spuds are treated with an anti-sprouting compound but plenty will bud anyway, something lazy cooks will have already discovered. There's a lot of talk about the necessity of buying specific seed potatoes from garden centres etc, but we've honestly never had a problem with supermarket ferals. If it's starting to bud, you can probably grow it. Choose medium to large tubers without visible holes, mouldy bits or scabbiness.
Round up your seed spuds a month before you intend to plant (from the end of winter onwards), lay them in a shallow box or tray (see below) and put them somewhere warm and dry, so that they'll sprout. This process is called chitting. I haven't found light levels to be particularly important but I chit mine in bright shade ie. outside under my cactus bench. After a few weeks you'll find them sending out little tentacles like the one to the right here. We like to plant them at this stage, before the stalks get any longer to prevent them being knocked about too much.
You can bury a live potato before it has visibly sprouted; it will usually grow normally enough once the soil is warm. It just takes a little bit longer and you may have planted a few duds.
You can bury a live potato before it has visibly sprouted; it will usually grow normally enough once the soil is warm. It just takes a little bit longer and you may have planted a few duds.
 > And by fallow, we mean fallow. This is the long L-shaped bed full of weeds and going-to-seed kale that is our designated potato land. Looks bad, doesn't it? Never mind; an hour's digging puts it right. BELOW: Ready for planting out. This is okay-to-good soil that's probably still reeling from last year's overenthusiastic fertiliser application, so we won't amend it further at this point. Too much fert and new organic-based compost added to the soil at planting time will mean you end up with scabby-skinned potatoes. They're still perfectly edible, just ugly. So soil that may be a little tired is still fine for spuds.  BELOW: Once you've dug it over to a depth of 20-30cm, toss your spuds over the surface to work out your spacing. Not too hard since you don't want to bust the buds off the tubers. This bed's about a metre wide, so yeah, we are cramming them a wee bit. Oh well.  > Planting: We dig as far down as the trowel and our patience will allow (around 20cm) and then place the tuber in the hole, sprouty bits facing up. Leave them uncovered so you can see where they are as you're planting, then backfill the holes (don't tamp them down hard- you can fuck up the buried buds). Just covered or a full foot- you'll get potatoes either way and we've never discovered an optimal depth. You're going to mulch them anyway so don't lose sleep about it. | How many you grow will depend on the available space. We plant tightly at around 1 seed spud per 30 square centimetres. That will possibly horrify traditionalists who insist on much wider spacing, but we've found that in our conditions spacing produces little difference in yield. This may be because we plant in long strips rather than fat blocks and the plants are therefore lit and aerated from both sides. When to plant. In our mild NZ coastal Zone 9 position (think something between coastal California and the southern Irish coast), we do so anytime from early September to Feburary, resulting in cropping from Xmas into late autumn. We could possibly get away with them all year round since we're not very frosty, but we prefer to leave the garden fallow in winter. Potatoes don't really care where you put them. Shallow soil, deep soil, bad soil, half-sun, full sun; the only conditions you should spare them are too much shade and waterlogged soil. That will guarantee rot of the tuber and wilt of the leafy parts. Aside from that, we actually used spud crops to break up shitty clay pan when we were bringing this garden into cultivation. Works a treat.  Sorry worms!  Everything is poodle business.   |
Once you've got your potatoes covered with a decent layer of soil you can scatter some fertiliser on top if you think they're going to need it. If it's a dry season, you can water-in the new bed but we usually leave that to the elements. In fact water is possibly the only identifiable factor we've ever been able to isolate in achieving a good crop; once the plants have emerged, which can take a month, they'll grow to anything from knee to waist height, flower and become very thirsty, especially in raised beds while the tubers are proliferating underground (we'll post pics of this progress as it happens). Once the plants have established themselves, mulch the ground between them with pea straw, brown pine needles or whatever takes your fancy, pulling out any slimy, terminally overcrowded or diseased-looking plants and being especially careful to cover the edge of the beds to prevent sunlight reaching the new tubers. They're perverse little buggers, forming as close to the surface as possible in many cases; UV light will turn them green and mildly toxic which = no bueno. Some people 'mound' their plants by piling soil up against the stems as they grow in the belief this increases yield. Maybe it does (we're not convinced) but this is too much like hard work and our soil isn't deep enough anyway, so we never bother and still get enough spuds to last most of the year.
Once you have adult-looking plants try and water once a day, easing off with the hose once the crop hits three months old and starts to get a bit geriatric. At this juncture they're committing their last energy to the subterranean tubers and are particularly susceptible to shitty diseases. Don't turn them into a pile of slimy mush by wetting them all the time.
I won't go into the pests and diseases that can afflict potatoes in any given area; there are a few here, but we've never suffered any major epidemics in our diverse, unsprayed garden. When I see a bit of blight, I just rip off that part of the plant, adjust my cultivation and leave the rest to take their chances. If you're suffering a heavy pest and pathology load you might want to review your entire gardening system and that's beyond the scope of this piece.
I'll write about harvesting and storage when the time comes. BELOW RIGHT: Here's the garlic we planted in mid winter (read about that here); it's coming along nicely. BELOW LEFT: Let's kick the growing season off with a nice big fucking trowel blister. Some hands stay tough and honest all year round; others have been up to no-good effete shit all winter. A writer's work is never done.
Once you have adult-looking plants try and water once a day, easing off with the hose once the crop hits three months old and starts to get a bit geriatric. At this juncture they're committing their last energy to the subterranean tubers and are particularly susceptible to shitty diseases. Don't turn them into a pile of slimy mush by wetting them all the time.
I won't go into the pests and diseases that can afflict potatoes in any given area; there are a few here, but we've never suffered any major epidemics in our diverse, unsprayed garden. When I see a bit of blight, I just rip off that part of the plant, adjust my cultivation and leave the rest to take their chances. If you're suffering a heavy pest and pathology load you might want to review your entire gardening system and that's beyond the scope of this piece.
I'll write about harvesting and storage when the time comes. BELOW RIGHT: Here's the garlic we planted in mid winter (read about that here); it's coming along nicely. BELOW LEFT: Let's kick the growing season off with a nice big fucking trowel blister. Some hands stay tough and honest all year round; others have been up to no-good effete shit all winter. A writer's work is never done.
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