Urban Farming Oz

The humble potato, so easy to grow, versatile to cook and simply delicious.

This is one of the easiest and most productive crops you can grow. It is a hardy vegetable that also stores well (in a cool, dark, dry place) after harvesting. Amazingly, there are over 500 varieties of potato!

Growing Spuds

Potatoes grow quickly, and you can plant successive crops to follow one after the other. Potatoes are vulnerable to frost and are usually planted to avoid the last frosts of winter. You can cover the new crops with mulch or a plastic igloo to protect them from any late frosts.

Start with a Seed Potato, this is usually a selection of potatoes from last year's crop. You can purchase seed potatoes or simply plant potatoes that have sprouted in your cupboard. Potatoes grown for sale in the supermarket are often sprayed with a growth inhibitor, and you will get better yields from seed potatoes. Potatoes sprout from the eyes on the tuber, and although the plant does produce seeds after flowering, it is the tubers we use to grow new crops. If you are growing potatoes in your garden bed you may find that pieces of potato left from last years crops grow spontaneously. If you are rotating crops this can cause a problem. Make sure you remove the rogue potatoes as they sprout.

Potatoes like full sun, and well manured soil. Too much nitrogen will cause them to put energy into lush green leaves rather than the tuber. Plant  potatoes about 25cm deep and cover well. The new potatoes will develop between the planted tuber and the leaves at the top. As the plant grows continue to mound soil and mulch around the plant. If the developing tubers are close to the surface and light they will turn green. Green potatoes are poisonous as are the stems and leaves of the plant. Mounding up the soil will also promote higher yields. You can easily grow potatoes in a small space, and still produce enough to more than satisfy your needs. In the image to the right, we've created a bed out of planks we collected from a disused pallet. As the plants grow taller, we mound more soil and mulch around them and add another layer of wood around them.

You can grow your potatoes in a variety of containers, including bags  and even buckets! The secret is to make sure the plant receives light and that you have space to keep building up the soil. Bags allow you to roll up the bag as you add more soil, and you can stack tyres as the plants grow taller.

There are different opinions on when to harvest potatoes, from time of plant flowering to when the foliage starts to die back. You can harvest new potatoes early by gently feeling around in the soil for potatoes that are large enough to eat - we call this 'bandicooting'. Harvesting at the end of the season generally means digging up the plant and removing all the potatoes. Be sure to dig around a bit...they can be spread out and quite deep. Leave the potatoes in the sun for a day to harden the skins, but no longer as they will turn green.

 Store potatoes in a cool dark place. They'll last a long time. Vegetables are an excellent carrier for butter (real butter, not margarine!) and potatoes are one of the best! So, get cracking and start growing your potatoes!

See also our how How to Choose Potatoes for Planting article.