Potatoes are rather easy to grow but not in any manner! Our advices for flavourful and abundant harvests of fingerlings, bintje, amandine or any other kind of potatoes.
1. Tend to the ground
As always in a vegetable garden, success first comes from a rich soil which was cared for over winter. Miss potatoes can be a bit demanding, but she prefers light and deep soils free from pebbles and large soil balls. Compost, manure and adapted natural fertilizers (specially to provide potash) enrich the soil in nutritional elements before or during the growth – depending on cases.
2. Plant when and how they are meant to
Whether you used pre-germinated plants or ones your sprouted yourself, do not be impatient! Potatoes love fresh and humid environments but dread freezes: depending on the region, plant is done from February to May when the soil had time to heat itself up a bit. According to an old French saying, potatoes should be planted when Lilac is blooming. Sprouted plants are dropped with the sprouts facing up about 8 to 10cm deep, properly spaced. They are then covered with soil and watered.
3. Carefully earth up
When the leaves are about 20 centimetres, it is time to earth up – aiming to bring the soil back around the foot and only the extremity stick out. This gesture – useful to repeat as the growth goes along – favours the apparition of tubers and allows to limit watering while improving potato productivity and quality. Protected from the light, they do not go green (a colour that would prevent them from meet human consumption standards).
4. Protect the plants
To fight against mildew – potatoes’ formidable foe – beware of over-watering! The soil must be humid but better avoid wetting the foliage. In case of attack, we generally apply some Bordeaux mixture and plant the tubers elsewhere the following year. Another of potatoes’ foe, the Colorado beetle is particularly feared by gardeners. Preferably, we destroy it by hand, by picking up and killing adult insects and quashing the larvae, or by spaying nettle, horseradish or tansy manure. After the harvest, fries, mashed potatoes and other potato-based dishes are yours!