How to Prepare Potatoes for Planting

Video Transcript

"Hi! I'm Doug Smiddy with Smiddy's Gardening Services here on behalf of expertvillage.com. Today we are going to talk about how to plant, grow and harvest potatoes. Now it is time to plant our potatoes. It takes about 3 months to grow altogether depending on where you live. Here in Vermont, we can plant around Memorial Day or even a little later. You don't want to do it when it is too cold. Usually after the last frost day is a pretty good time. What I like to do first is we've dug our trench. I like to loosen up that bottom layer of soil just a little bit. You can't really over do it. I like to give it plenty of room for those roots to get in there and start to grow will always result in better plants. So now that we've got that all set. We have our cut potatoes, cuts of heels we are ready to go. We are going to put them in the ground with the cut side down or the opposite way with the eyes facing up because that is how the plant is going to grow. So we are going to put them in the loosened soil and again one of the reasons I dig a trench is so I have soil off to the sides, all I have to do is just drag it down, put it over the potato about 3 inches over the top of the potato, pat it down like you do with any other plant. The reason you do that is to get rid of the air pockets. Bring that soil down and put our last piece in, 1 foot apart. Assuming that you are going to plant in multiple rows, make your rows I would say about 2 1/2 feet apart. You want to give your plants plenty of room to grow. Otherwise if they are too crowded, what you are going to do is get a lot of potatoes and they are going to be tiny. So give your plants plenty of room. "