Growing Potatoes Ideas, Experience, and Tips.

In all the years that I have lived in Wairakei Place, I have only once planted what they call Potato Seeds.

A neighbour gave me some of the purple potato seeds to plant she decided not to plant, and they did well, got heaps this year.

What I normally do is feed the garden everything that is natural that I throw out that comes from the kitchen, potato peels, all my food leftovers, scraps and the like.

I have had potatoes that one or two is big enough for the whole family at one dinner setting.

They come in all shapes and sizes, sometimes rather large.

Other than that once I planted some potato seeds, for about 30 years we have had a ongoing crop of potatoes without anything but the potato peels going back into the garden, scraps and the small potatoes from the previous years which I think are like seeds and help the next years crop. My experience is that it is easy to grow potatoes.

Sometimes the soil has not been that great yet the potatoes still keep sprouting each Spring and Summertime.

I weed and turn over the potato patches, some years I have left them, some years I have added compost, and each year they just keep growing. So far no issues with pest even though they are grown in the same place.

Each time it rains in the Spring I take the potato plants that are coming up in the other gardens and replant them on the rainy day in the potato patches and they grow healthy with many potatoes coming from these replanted seedlings.

Growing Potato may take a while to see the end results but could be a good project for children learning about farming, land, gardening and food “from the gardens to the table”.

All the best from
James M Sandbrook.

5th of April, 2021.