How To Grow Red Potatoes
Red potatoes like other red and purple verities of vegetables are packed with even more antioxidants than other verities. If you are looking to give your family a boost try growing these hearty red or baby red potatoes in your garden.
Red potatoes are packed with vitamins and minerals that help to keep you healthy while the potatoes themselves proved a nutrion-packed high-calorie food that can help sustain your family through even the toughest times making these a great addition to any garden space.
When to plant red potatoes
When to plant your red potatoes will depend on the zone you are growing them/ You should plant your red potatoes after the threat of the last frost has ended and your soil is on average in the 70s to help encourage growth.
Many gardeners that chose to grow red potatoes in containers opt to start their red potatoes indoors before the last frost allowing them to keep the red potatoes warm and offer foliage a grow light to get a potato harvest sooner.
How do you plant red potatoes?
When planting your red potatoes you want to plant them with the eyes pointing up. This will allow your plant to take off and start growing quickly without having to flip over to start growing upwards towards the warm sun.
Gently cover the sprouted red potatoes’ eyes with soil and continue to add more soil every couple of weeks to encourage your red potatoes to keep growing upwards producing more red potatoes in less time.
The key to growing healthy red potatoes is to ensure that they have enough nutrition. You should never use the same soil for red potatoes two years in a row and should always mix compost or another form of fertilizer into your solid before adding each batch of soil over the top of your red potatoes.
red potatoes should be given 1 to 2 inches of water per week to give them what they need to grow and transport vital nutrients. When growing in containers allow the soil to become dry to the touch between waterings to prevent overwatering your container red potatoes.
red potatoes should be given 1 to 2 inches of water per week to give them what they need to grow and transport vital nutrients. When growing in containers allow the soil to become dry to the touch between waterings to prevent overwatering your container red potatoes.
Companion planting red potatoes
For the best crop of red potatoes in a large container with room to spare or an in-ground mound, you shou8ld consider companion planting your red potatoes.
For most plants, red potatoes can leave them without what they need to thrive but green beans and other lingams like peas and lima beans all make a great nitrogen-fixing companion planning partner for nutrient hogging red potatoes.
Use seed red potatoes to plant your red potatoes
The most common way to plant red potatoes is with seed red potatoes. You can find seed red potatoes online and at your local nursery in the early spring. Seed red potatoes are organically grown red potatoes that have grown several eyes that can be used for planting.
Conventionally grown red potatoes can not be sued as seed red potatoes due to the retreatments they have received to help prevent sprouting and make your red potatoes last longer in storage.
How to plant red potatoes from the eyes
Even with chemical treatments, red potatoes do often still produce eyes that sprout. This can even be encouraged by placing an onion in with the red potatoes you are trying to sprout.
The gas the onions let off encourages sprouting in red potatoes and for this reason, it is recommended to store them separately despite both having the same ideal storage conditions.
Grow your red potatoes the way your grandma did
Traditionally red potatoes are planted in mounds or hills that allow the soil to be warmed faster and leave more room than a flat garden bed for vines to grow. Growing red potatoes in mounds take up a lot of space and are best left to those that have a very large garden. For most families, container-growing red potatoes allow for a larger yield.
Before you begin to prepare your potato gardening bed. Your potato garden should not be the same soil you used to grow red potatoes or other high-demand root vegetables the year before. This helps prevent soil depletion while providing you with higher-quality produce.
To grow in hills you need to set up your rows with small mounds, add in your seed red potatoes and sports, then cover with about 2 inches of dirt. After a couple of weeks return to add more dirt to the mounds to encourage more potato production.
To keep growing your mounds and increasing production keep adding soil and compost or fertilizer over the top of your plants that are 6 to 8 inches tall. This will allow your plants to produce more and have better quality soil.
Another great way to improve the soil for your potato garden is to companion plant your potatoes with green beans which are a natural nitrogen-fixing plant.
Growing red potatoes In Containers
Growing red potatoes in containers make the growing process easier as well as the harvesting process.
For the best results, you want a container that you can gradually raise the sides on to allow more sun to hit your red potatoes but you can usually get away with a simple large container as long as you have a sunny enough area to ensure that the sun will hit the top of your plants in the early stages of growth.
Popular options for growing Potatoe included grow bags, steal trash cans, and even homemade potato frames using wood frames to add layers along with more soil and fertilizer with each new layer.
When starting your red potatoes you will need to place 4 to 6 inches of soil at the bottom of your container. This will provide soil for the thin roots the potato plants will form. Place your red potatoes on top of this soil and loosely add another 4 inches of soil and fertilizer or fresh compost over top.
Every two weeks or so as your red potatoes reach 6 to 8 inches of height add another 4 inches of well-mixed soil and compost or fertilizer until you reach the top of your choice of container.
You can repeat that process until about 6 to 8 weeks before the first frost is expected to give the last addition of soil time to grow and mature the tubers in time for harvesting and storing.
Grow your red potatoes in bags
Growing red potatoes in bags are the same process as growing red potatoes in another container but bags are a bit more covenant. Potatoe growing bags can be rolled down to allow the sun to touch your potato plants as they grow and ruled up as you need to continue adding soil and fresh compost.
Some red potatoes growing sacks even have a door on the side of the bag allowing you to open it up and harvest your early red potatoes while allowing the red potatoes on the top to remain undisturbed and even keep adding soil to the top of an entires season-long supply of fresh homegrown red potatoes.
How do red potatoes grow
red potatoes are root vegetables or more accurately tubers that form on the lower part of the plant’s stems. This is why you burry your red potatoes more for several weeks after planting.
As you add more soil to your red potatoes you are burning the stems more to produce more tubers from the stems. This is why your red potatoes will always be above the space you plant your red potatoes rather than down at the bottom of the root system.
How long to grow red potatoes?
When you are growing red potatoes you may be wondering how long to let them grow because how long you grow them can affect the overall size of your potatoes. If you want baby red potatoes you can often harvest in only three months for the perfect tender baby potatoes.
When to harvest red potatoes in containers and mounds
After planting and urging your red potatoes to continue to grow more roots you will need to give your red potatoes time to grow and mature. This will take several weeks. The tops of your plants will have flowered and matured before eventually dying back completely.
When the top of your red potatoes have died off completely they are ready to be harvested from mounds and containers. These red potatoes have matured and are ready to be stored in a cool dark place for the winter.
If you are looking for red potatoes for imminent use like from a grow bag or container with a door that allows you to harvest while your red potatoes keep growing you can begin to harvest after your potato plants begin to flower.
How to harvest red potatoes
Harvesting red potatoes from your garden is fairly easy but if you get carried away you can also leave cuts and bruises in your red potatoes that will reduce their overall storage life.
To unbury from mounds you will need to remove the dirt over your red potatoes in the mounds setting it said for fertilizing and using to grow another plant next year. Continue to dig your red potatoes out until your mound is flat to ensure you got all of your red potatoes.
For harvesting in containers, the process is a lot simpler with less risk of hitting your red potatoes with a garden shovel. Lay out a large tarp or use the garden bed you plant to put your red potatoes soil next year as a space to dump out your potato plant containers.
After dumping your containers you can simply sift through the now loose dirt to pull out the fully grown red potatoes.
