Potatoes are one of the most popular vegetables in many gardens, and they're also incredibly affordable and healthy, making them an essential part of any dinner table. And how many different dishes can be made with potatoes!
But, in order there was a good potato harvest, you should know how to plant potatoes correctly, how to care for them, and what tricks to use to enjoy delicious potatoes year-round! After all, not only can you enjoy potatoes in season, but you can also store them for the winter.
Selecting seeds for planting
When it comes to planting potatoes to ensure a good harvest, it's important to carefully select the right seeds. After all, choosing the right seeds is the beginning of the entire potato growing and care process; it's the foundation without which achieving good results is impossible.
Large seeds can be cut in half, sprinkled with salt, and left in a warm, sunny spot. If it's rainy outside, there's a chance the seeds will simply rot. Therefore, it's best to choose warm, stable weather to dry the seeds, or skip this process altogether and plant larger tubers.
Selecting seeds is the first and most important step toward a bountiful potato harvest. Once you've selected the seeds, you can move on to how to plant them properly to ensure a bountiful harvest.
Preparatory work
The second thing you need to do after selecting the seeds is to prepare the soil for planting potatoes. Lunar calendar dates for planting potatoes this year.
If the soil was previously planted with potatoes, before planting new seeds, you need to harvest the entire crop, then clear the beds of weeds, tops, and debris. Once the soil is cleared, it needs to be thoroughly dug over.
The more thoroughly the soil is dug up, the better the conditions will be for the growth of a new potato crop.
The next step in preparing the soil for planting is fertilizing. Lime is generally the best fertilizer for growing potatoes. Two cups of lime are used per square meter. Fertilizing is quite simple—simply sprinkle the soil with lime in the prescribed amount.
Preparatory work involving soil cultivation is carried out in the fall and left in this state until spring. With the arrival of spring, it is advisable to fertilize the soil again, this time using only mineral and organic mixtures.
Landing time
How to plant potatoes correctly to ensure a good harvest? There's another nuance that many often ignore: planting timing.
Potato planting times should be chosen so that the soil has already warmed to 7-8 degrees Celsius at a depth of 13 centimeters. Failure to wait until the soil reaches this temperature may result in the death of all the tubers being planted.
When choosing planting dates, it's important to consider the weather and climate conditions of the region, not just specific dates. Experience shows that the best time to plant potatoes in the CIS countries is late May.
Tips for planting potatoes
While selecting seeds and timing their planting are two important considerations, the question of how to properly plant potatoes to ensure a good harvest remains no less important than the previous two points.
Planting and caring for potatoes isn't difficult; the main thing is to follow all the advice and recommendations. First, dig the soil to create neat rows.
Advice: Every year, you need to select a new plot of land for planting potatoes, as over time, the soil loses the nutrients needed for healthy potato growth. If you don't change the location of your potato plants, you won't get a bountiful harvest.
Once the planting soil is ready, dug, and fertilized, plant the potatoes at a depth of 10 centimeters. For best potato growth, add ash and compost to each hole. It's also important to space the holes 80-90 centimeters apart. This will promote better potato growth and make caring for them much easier.
Once all the seeds are in the ground, the soil needs to be leveled, making sure that the top layer of soil is not too thick, otherwise the sprouts will have a hard time breaking through it, which means that the growth of the vegetable will slow down, and the harvest may be late.
It's also important to remember that potatoes prefer light and warm areas and don't tolerate cramped growing conditions, so don't skimp on spacing between holes and plant one tuber on top of another.
Planting potatoes under straw
Except standard method of planting potatoesThere's another way to plant potatoes correctly to ensure a good harvest (video). This option involves planting potatoes under straw. Before we move on to how to plant potatoes this way, we can note the advantages of this planting method:
- There is no need to dig up the soil in autumn and spring;
- There is no need to add fertilizer, as the rotted straw acts as a soil fertilizer;
- Instead of loosening and hilling the soil, you can simply add straw periodically;
- Under straw, potatoes are less vulnerable to various diseases and pests typical for this crop;
- The harvest can be collected manually, without using a shovel;
- By the end of the harvest, the soil is ready for the next planting;
To plant potatoes under straw, simply place the prepared potato seeds in the soil and cover with straw. Periodically, add more straw and water the soil. If the weather is warm and dry, the straw, instead of rotting, may simply burn, taking the entire crop with it. Regularly watering the potatoes under the straw will help quickly obtain the humus and necessary fertilizers for healthy growth and a bountiful harvest.
Some tricks
By using a few tricks on how to plant potatoes correctly to get a good harvest, you can make your life much easier.
First, every gardener should try different planting methods to determine which one is best suited for their region. While one region's weather conditions may yield a bountiful potato harvest with one planting method, another region's potatoes, planted using the same method, may fail to germinate at all. Therefore, only through trial and error can one determine the correct way to plant potatoes for a bountiful harvest.
When planting potatoes, it's important to pay attention to weather conditions, follow all advice, and remember to provide proper care. Then, in the fall, you'll be able to reap a bountiful harvest of tasty and healthy potatoes!
Good luck in the garden!
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Nedarina
When planting under straw, it's important to water the potatoes carefully to prevent the sprouts from drying out (I plant them on turf). The potatoes will ripen clean and disease-free, but mice will eat them. If you don't add hay (weeded grass) during flowering, the potatoes will stay green. Plant from the birch leaf unfold to the oak leaf unfold. If there's plenty of hay, and it hasn't rotted over the winter, it's best to plant them by poking them with a stick, without turning them, in sandy or rocky soils. Potatoes grow too big in deeply plowed soil, making it difficult to reach with a pitchfork, and the harvest is lost. Therefore, it's best to dig up the garden in the fall, creating ridges under which you can plant the potatoes in the spring and level them with a hoe.
Have a good harvest