Kids Corner: Harvesting Potatoes

Did you know?

Potatoes are a warm season crop in Alabama. We plant seed potatoes in mid February and harvest in mid to late May. Ours are ready now! We will harvest them today on Facebook LIVE at 3 PM. Join us!

How to grow potatoes (Solanum tuberosum):

Step 1: Pick out a good sunny spot in your yard to put a large pot, grow bag, or in ground garden. Make sure you add some compost and/or manure (“Black cow”) and hill the soil for good drainage.

Step 2: Get any sprouting potatoes from your pantry and plant them 12'"inches or 1 foot apart. Plant potatoes at least twice as deep as they are wide. Mulch with newspaper or straw if you have it.

Step 3: Keep the soil moist but not too wet by monitoring rain and watering when the ground is dry next to your potato one inch deep. You can soil moisture by poking into the soil with your finger. If it’s dry one inch down, water, if not,leave it until tomorrow when you check again. Check on your plants every day.

Step 4: After a couple of months the plants will have beautiful little blooms. A couple weeks after the plants bloom and the plants begin to weather, you can dig up your potatoes! Careful not to slice the potatoes. Dig around the potato plant and unearth from underneath.

Check it out! It’s a family!

Potatoes are in the same plant family along with eggplant (Solanum melongena) and tomato (Solanum lycopersicum). That means that they are not the same varieties but they are like cousins. These plants are so different. Isn’t it cool how one plant family can contain so much variety?

The cousin plants have similar needs in the garden and it helps farmers to know plant families so they can take care of their crops.

I hope you will join me at 3 PM on Facebook LIVE on the EAT South page.

Please e-mail me any questions or to request to be part of a Kids Corner Zoom at goodfoodday@eatsouth.org.

Until next time!

All my best,

Farmer Amanda