How to Grow a Potato for Idiots Like Me

For those of you still bracing against the bitter cold, I'm not. Its warm here and I'm planting green things in the ground. MWA HA HA HA HA! Specifically Potatoes.

The potato is awesome.

Fries, potato pancakes, mashed tatties, baked tatties, poutine, chips, crisps, perogies hash browns, boiled potato covered in salt, pepper and hot butter, and potato salad ...if you like cold potatoes slathered in mayo.

Potato Queen

Its nutritional, and though some people think its boring, if you've ever had one fresh from the grown, you'll never see them as dull again. 

So how do you get that garden fresh taste? Grow them. That's what this is about. Growing a god damn potato.

In short you stick the beggars in the ground. Bury them alive. Watch the bastards sprout, then after months and months of that, rip em out of the ground.

That's what I did. My parents are farmers so I've planted more potatoes. There was some winging in the process, but I paid attention enough so that when it came to it, I wasn't a wayward lamb.  I popped those beggars in the ground, and for nearly two months left them in the ground. Complications in the work place made it really hard for me to give anything other than work any attention, but sure enough a few months later, shoving their way between the weeds, were potato plant leaves. 

I re-weeded. I'm confident the potatoes were gleefully waving the middle finger at unwanted plants.

Kept an eye on it for the remainder of the summer. In August, on a bright sunny day, a 1.5 bag of potatoes from the spring turned into a 5-7 pound bag of potatoes.

My own potatoes grown.

How do you actually potatoes though?

Easy. Find a plot of land, it doesn't have to be big, make sure it gets medium to full sun (which is more than 4 hours of direct sunlight).

Next till up the earth. Make sure there are little weeds in it. When clearing my hostel patch, I found two years worth of plant, stone, ash, coal and beer glass from hostel goers gone by. It was all binned or shoved away. Make sure the soil is turned and loose. Now, you can add more top soil, or compost if you don't think your soil is good enough, but few people realize how hearty the potato is.

Garden before potatoes

Hoe out a row about 6 inches deep into the ground an even line along the length of your. Take a bag of potatoes, like the ones you can buy in the grocery store, and you can either be economical and split them or leave them whole. If you split them, make sure they have two eyes, Eyes are the bits that eventually grow legs if you've left tatties too long in a warm dark area(there is a dirty innuendo here). Plop them in the ground about a foot to a foot or twelve inches apart.

Re mound the dirt you hoed back to make the rows up into mounds. After this weed as regularly as you can. Because I'm a heartless mother, I abandoned them to grow on their own.

Unweeded Potatoes. This is when I realized the potatoes were growing on their own. I am a heartless mother.

Make sure they get enough water, that the soil doesn't go dry for too long. I live in Scotland so there's no worry for lack of rain.

 I planted in April. I was able to harvest in end of August. Keep an eye out for bugs and things like that. But really, just keep an eye out on them and you should have some form of potato. All it costs is the seed. Then you have more potatoes. I planted them again this year!

Any questions? Just ask me or google... like everyone else does! You sheep!