Nothing is quite as satisfying as harvesting your own homegrown potatoes. Earthy, flavourful and far superior to any shop-bought spud, potatoes are a great staple veg to grow yourself. 

They can be grown in most climates if you choose a suitable variety and are pretty easy-going, happy to grow in the ground or in pots, bags, bathtubs, laundry baskets and more! This makes them a great choice no matter how much growing room you have.

In Perth and other mediterranean climates, potatoes can be grown most of the year round but most varieties don't love the hot summer months. Autumn is a great time to get your seed potatoes in the ground. 

Without further ado, here’s everything you need to know to get started growing your own homegrown potatoes!

Getting Ready to Grow

Choose a Sunny Location

Potatoes grow well in garden beds, but will equally perform well in large pots, wire mesh towers, old coffee sacks and other containers. 

One of the easiest ways to grow potatoes is using a Potato Grow Bag, which allows you to harvest regularly through the window at the base without disturbing the plant. Our large Root Pouches are another great choice.

Whatever the growing container, choose a sunny spot. Potatoes do well with full sun throughout the day.

Consider Crop Rotation

Growing different plant families in succession helps reduce nutrient depletion in a garden bed and reduces the chance of pests and diseases running rampant. 

• It’s best not to plant potatoes where other members of the Solanum family (chillies, capsicums, tomatoes, eggplants) have grown in the last few years. 

• If you can, plant your potatoes where legumes like beans and peas have grown previously, as these plants add the nitrogen that potatoes love to the soil.

• After harvesting your potatoes, use this spot in the garden to grow leafy greens.

Plant Some Companions

Find out more: A Beginner’s Guide to Companion Planting

Prepare Your Soil

Potatoes need deep, loose, free-draining soils that are slightly acidic with plenty of organic matter. They grow best in a mixture of compost, well-rotted manure and straw. 

Use a Soil pH Test to avoid planting in alkaline soils and unwittingly making your potato crop vulnerable to potato scab.

Add your own compost, if making it at home. Otherwise, choose a high quality compost and mulch to ensure your growing potatoes have the nutrients they need. Our Nutrarich Mature Compost and Straw Mulch are great options.

Selecting Your Seed Potatoes

Go For Locally Grown Seed Potatoes

While potatoes can be grown from true seeds, the easiest way to grow them is by planting seed potatoes or tubers. This is essentially a potato from last season that’s ready to sprout into a new plant.

Supermarket potatoes might produce potato plants if left to sprout, but they might also introduce diseases to your garden that can take years to eradicate. Opting for locally grown seed potatoes is safer and likely to get you much better results as they’re certified disease free and adapted to local conditions.

Choose A Variety You’ll Love

Our most popular WA seed potato varieties include Prince of Orange, Kipfler, Royal Blue and Colomba. 

Potatoes are classified as determinate or indeterminate. Your growing space may influence which you decide to grow.

• Indeterminate potatoes grow tubers along a stem. The growing stems need covering several times during the growing period to get better yields. For this reason, indeterminate potatoes are best for in-ground and potato bag methods where you can keep layering soil over the plant as it grows.

• Determinate potatoes grow to a set height and produce tubers in a single layer that will be ready roughly at the same time. They therefore don’t require the mounding up of soil, and for this reason are better suited to growing in containers and pots where you can’t layer up the soil. They also tend to be faster growing and quicker to harvest than indeterminate varieties.
  

Find out more: Determinate vs Indeterminate - Which Potato Reigns Supreme?

Cut Up Larger Seed Potatoes

Seed potatoes about the size of a chicken’s egg are ideal for planting. Larger seed potatoes can be cut into pieces – just ensure each piece contains a few healthy-looking eyes. Cut potatoes should be left for a few days before planting to give the cut surfaces time to dry and callus.

Try ‘Chitting’ or Presprouting Your Potatoes

Some gardeners like to pre-sprout their seed potatoes before planting, giving them a head start for a quicker and larger harvest. This process is called “chitting”. 

To chit your seed potatoes, simply leave them in a cool, light place until they produce shoots about 5mm long – this may take a few weeks.

Chitting is the process of pre-sprouting your potatoes before planting them out.

How To Grow Potatoes

1. The Traditional Way: In a Garden Bed

1. After preparing the soil by adding lots of organic matter, dig trenches or planting holes about 20cm deep in your garden bed. 

2. Lay out your seed potatoes, leaving about 25cm between each, and cover them with about 15cm of the same mix. Water in with some seaweed solution.

3. When small green shoots begin to peek through, add another 15cm of the compost, manure and straw mixture. 

4. For Indeterminate varieties, continue to top up the manure and compost mixture throughout the growing season, creating hillocks over the garden beds. This will give the plants plenty of soil depth in which the tubers can form. Once the soil depth (from original seed potato to top of hillock) reaches about 60cm, leave your plants to keep growing.

2. Growing Potatoes In Containers or Potato Grow Bags

1. If growing in large pots, potato towers, or Potato Grow Bags, put down a 15-20cm layer of mixed compost, aged manure and straw in the base of your pot and water this in. 

2. Lay out your seed potatoes leaving about 25cm between them, and cover with about 15cm of the compost mixture. Water in with some seaweed solution.

3. For indeterminate varieties, continue to add the compost mixture as the potato shoots emerge through the surface. Once the container is full, leave the plants to continue growing.

Caring For Your Potato Plants

Avoid Over Watering

Water your potatoes, but not too much – over-watering can lead to disease. Don’t use greywater to irrigate potatoes or other root vegetables.

Feed With Seaweed Solution

Potatoes are fairly hungry plants. Manure and compost are essential, but potatoes will also benefit from a drink of seaweed solution at planting time and again when they flower.

How To Harvest Potatoes

New or “baby” potatoes can be harvested just as the lower leaves begin to yellow. Mature potatoes should be harvested after flowering when the foliage dies back. 

Harvesting a Little at a Time

Gather just enough potatoes for one meal by carefully ferreting through the soil by hand. If you’ve grown your plants in our Potato Grow Bags you can easily collect just a few potatoes by tipping the bag a little and carefully reaching through the window. The remaining tubers can be left to grow undisturbed.

Harvesting All in One Go

• Potatoes grown in-ground are easily harvested using our fabulous Potato Harvesting Scoop – don’t use a gardening fork as the tines can easily cause damage.

• Collect all your container-grown potatoes at once by cutting off the foliage, emptying the container into a wheel barrow and sorting through the soil by hand. 

After your mature potatoes have been lifted, spread them out in the shade to dry for a few hours before storing them. Don’t wash your potatoes as this can make them vulnerable to rot. Simply brush big clumps of dirt off with your hands and leave the potatoes dirty when storing.

This potato scoop is a gentle way to harvest your potato crops without damaging them.

How To Store Potatoes

New potatoes don’t store well and are best eaten within a few days of harvest.

Mature potatoes will store for 2 or 3 months provided that they are fully mature and their skins are undamaged. Check them carefully for soft spots, discolouration and other imperfections, then store your dirt-coated potatoes in a cool, dark place - exposure to sunlight causes potatoes to turn green and poisonous. 

Don’t wash the potatoes before storing as this makes them vulnerable to rot. Store dirty and simply wash when you are preparing to cook. When cleaning, use a Vegetable Brush to softly brush or wash the dirt off the potatoes without damaging them.

Happy Potato Growing!

References

Vegetable growing: a guide for home gardeners in Western Australia (Department of Agriculture, Western Australia) 

Sustainable Gardening Australia https://www.sgaonline.org.au/potatoes/

Growing Potatoes by Ignoring Them (Epic Gardening) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1SWKNOXEJ0

“Free Plants for Everyone – The Good Guide to Plant Propagation”, David the Good

https://www.gardenmyths.com/potato-towers-high-yields/

“The Resilient Gardener”, Carol Deppe

“How to Grow More Vegetables”, John Jeavons