Tag Archives: potatoes

Square foot garden potatoes

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There are probably a lot of ways to plant potatoes. For me, I don’t want to leave them out for several days before planting, and I don’t want to worry about hilling. This is the method I learned. Cut your seed potatoes so the each piece has at last 2 eyes. I bury them right into the soil, cover completely, and start watering. They are planted 6 or 7 inches deep and will be ready in 4-1/2 months. I like them big.

I spent $2.50 on 3 pounds of Red Pontiac potatoes. By the time I cut them up, I had enough for 8 square feet. That will yield somewhere around 45+ pounds when finished. And the taste? You’ll never beat them! 

My experience is that potatoes do best in garden soil, not so much in grow bags, tires, wood boxes, etc. These will start to pop up in about 4 weeks, and in the SFG, they are planted 5 per square. 

 

The ease of planting in the square foot garden

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One of the greatest things about a square foot garden is you don’t have to do it all at once. I like to do a few little things every day during the growing season. Easy things. As I look to previous garden diary notes, this month and April are the most active months for me as far as active planting. 

Today I planted 2 squares of red onions, 2 squares of red pontiac potatoes, and 3 squares of lettuces. I turned the compost pile and watered anything that look a little dry. My winter sowings look really good and in a few days I’ll begin to separate those up and put them into squares. Cilantro, spinach, and tatsoi are the most ready to go. 

Planting two or three squares every few days means a lot less work. It also means you won’t have an all at once harvest. By the time Labor day rolls around, when most of your neighborhood gardeners are burned out from weeding, watering, and the overall work load of their gardens, you’ll be thinking of ways to extend your season because it was so little work. 

And you enjoyed 100% of the harvest. 

Eat better tasting food without all the pesticides on them. Save money. Take control of your food supply. 

Winter planting the square foot gardening

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Winter gardening in northern Utah isn’t really gardening. It’s all harvesting. That means a little extra planning. The important point isn’t really the average first frost date but rather the first day we go under 10 hours of sunlight. For us, thats around November 14th. This is just one of my 4X4 SFG boxes planted for the winter. So far, the timing looks good. What’s in there? Lots. Three different kinds of lettuces, green onions, arugula, minutina, claytonia, spinach, turnips, mache, red pontiac potatoes, and tatsoi. They all love the cold and even freezing weather, except the lettuces. The baby leaf lettuces will easily make it right through the winter months. Get those gardens planted!!! 

Potatoes in the square foot garden

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I don’t think I’ve ever posted about potatoes. If I have, it has been a while. The basic spacing of 1, 4, 9, and 16 in the SFG system is excellent, but with potatoes, I learned to change that up. Potatoes are planted 5 per square, and I always make sure each seed has at least two eyes in them. I do not hill. I do not let them scab over before putting them in soil. I just bury them 7-8 inches deep, cover, and start watering. In about 5 weeks they break the surface. I’ve grown potatoes in grow bags before, but I’ve never been able to match the yield than I can when planted in the square foot gardens. The soil really makes a difference. How much can you expect? I always harvest 5-7 pounds of red pontiacs every year. And the taste. 

Growing potatoes in the square foot garden

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IMG_0451Alright-square foot gardeners talk about growing things in only 6″ of soil. That’s true most of the time, but for potatoes not so much.

In Mels book on SFG he talks and shows pictures of his “top-hat” as it’s referred to. This is a simple wood structure that has four side, with no top and no bottom. It can be a 2X4, 2X6, 2X8, etc. Place this top-hat on any square(or squares), fill it with more Mel’s mix, and then you can successfully grow potatoes or any other root vegetable with more soil available.

I make sure that each seed potato has at least 2 eyes, and then I place 5 of them in each square. If it works out, I can count on 6-7 pounds of potatoes per square foot. I don’t bother hilling the potatoes. I just bury them 6-8 inches in the soil, cover them up, water, and then in a matter of weeks they will break the top surface.

Let them grow until the stalks turn brown and start to fall over. Cut back the growth and then reach down to find little gold nuggets. Once you’ve grown your own new potatoes you’ll never want to buy them again.

My favorite potato to grow is Red Pontiac. I grew a purple variety last year and they were okay. Nowhere near as good as the red’s, so I’ll stick mostly to that. Growing different potatoes does give you a contrast in taste and color.[ois skin=”3″]