Growing Potato

Solanum tuberosum : Solanaceae / the nightshade family

Jan F M A M J J A S O N Dec
            P P P P P  

(Best months for growing Potato in Australia - temperate regions)

  • P = Plant seed potatoes
  • Plant tuber. Best planted at soil temperatures between 10°C and 30°C. (Show °F/in)
  • Space plants: 30 - 40 cm apart
  • Harvest in 15-20 weeks. Dig carefully, avoid damaging the potatoes.
  • Compatible with (can grow beside): Peas, Beans, Brassicas, Sweetcorn, Broad Beans, Nasturtiums, Marigolds
  • Avoid growing close to: Cucumber, Pumpkin, Sunflowers, Tomatoes, Rosemary

Your comments and tips

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29 Dec 09, Chris (Australia - cool/mountain climate)
Janet, those fruit on the potatoes are potato berries - they are poisonous and should just be left. You shouldn't need to stake the plants, but you might have fed them a bit much nitrogen if they are growing tons of leaf. You've probably got new potatoes you can harvest now if you feel around ('bandicoot') under the plants, otherwise just leave until the plants die off to harvest full-sized potatoes.
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14 Dec 09, Janet (Australia - temperate climate)
I've not had much success with potatoes in the past. My present crop seems to be OK but should I stake the plants as they are falling all over the place even though I've been adding more soil and straw. Also little bunches of green"fruit" have appeared on some plants. Anyone know what these are?
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02 Dec 09, Graeme (Australia - temperate climate)
Mary, I'm growing potatoes for the first time this year and the heat knocked mine around as well. However, with plenty of watering and the cool change we've had this week, they have come back.
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26 Nov 09, adam synnott (Australia - cool/mountain climate)
Teashy, potatoes often resprout after a shock like that, have faith, and they could be okay. In my climate, they often get frosted off completely, but then come back from the dead. Mary, potatoes have a really hard time in the tropics/sub tropics. I think there will be some years when there is just too much against them. This year seems to be a bit hotter than normal, so maybe they have a few too many bugs this year, combined with the unusual heat, it could just be a year to concentrate on other crops. If you plant them in the shade, they will do a lot better. It isn't too late to plant some fresh ones, and don't put them in direct sunlight. They are quite tenacious, and will grow in quite low light. The reason they didn't develop more taters is, as you rightly point out, that they just didn't have the time to grow to their full potential.
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26 Nov 09, Mary (Australia - sub-tropical climate)
My potatoes were eaten by the big ladybirds and grasshoppers. The recent heat finished them off. I dug up some today and there was a small number of developed potatoes but not as many as there should be. Is this because they did not get to flower? I grew them in old plastic garbage bins and filled them with mulch as they grew. There was no potatoes until I dug down to the dirt so what is the point of "hilling" them?
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22 Nov 09, Teashy B (Australia - temperate climate)
I have had my potatoes in for maybe 6 weeks or a little bit more, due to the extremem heat we have been having the leaves have died very quickly and all I can see is the dirt underneath. Do I just leave them in and hope for the best or do I pull them up? Any comments or hints would be greatly appreciated. Many thanks
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21 Nov 09, emma (Australia - cool/mountain climate)
I am growing potatoes in inner melbourne, in a tiny back yard plot. I planted farm potatoes from ballarat and they sprouted quickly and grew about four very healthy looking plants. I decided to stake them or at least support them and they grew to about 1.2m. I rarely remembered to build up the soil around the stalks. Now green caterpillars are decimating the plants and they are looking terrible. They haven't flowered. Should I leave them in or forget this crop and try again next year?
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19 Nov 09, Gwynneth Grogan (Australia - temperate climate)
Some of my potatoes have curly leaves and the actual potatoe is split, would this be the heat.
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09 Nov 09, pete (Australia - sub-tropical climate)
i grew potatoes this year. kipfer sebago and pontiac. i put heaps of compost into the garden and all my potatoes went really spindly and leggy they had plenty of sunlight and all the potatoes that i harvested were quite small, have i put too much compost/manures in my garden beds? everything else seems to be doing fine...
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08 Nov 09, cons (Australia - cool/mountain climate)
Do the tubers grow along the stem or on the roots? A friend says hilling the plants is so that more tubers grow - is this right? How do I know when to lift them? Is it when thee flowers die down?
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I heard that the potato will stop sending nutrients to the tubers if the stalks are bent. One of the most successful potato harvests I have ever seen was a large container grown project where he used several layers (think of a layer cake) of horizontal plastic fencing and t-posts at each corner to hold the horizontal fencing to keep the stalks from bending at all and support them as they grew. They were able to get an absolutely massive yield with that method although he was sick all summer and didn't care for them or water them at all. I am not sure that the container growing was as pivotal in the results as just keeping the stalks from bending over. I have container grown before and will try it again this spring as well as ground growing using his methods to keep the stalks upright. I think another often overlooked issue is either too much or too little phosphorus and potash in 10-10-10 fertilizer. I think 'balanced' fertilizers can present real problems for root crops since they don't need or want balanced inputs. You will always have too much of something and too little of the other. Also there is a time delay on phosphorus while it stays in the upper part of the soil, so you can apply phosphorus to increase tuber formation, but it takes 3 months to disperse into the soil, while nitrogen sinks like a stone through soil an becomes almost immediately bio-unavailable (or runs off into the environment via water). So if you are using 10-10-10 you are going to end up poisoning your plants in order to get one or another nutrients available in the correct quantity. Plus factor in the time delay to bioavailability. I think it is better to thoroughly prepare soil before you put your garden to bed in the winter than prepare it in the spring (actually I have revived some fruit trees that were very old and no longer producing by fall fertilizing; I got almost $700 worth of organic pears and even more than this in apples last year through fall fertilizing). I also heard (and studied it last year in my own garden) that potatoes grow between the seed potato and the surface. If you bury them deep you will increase yields as there is more space for them to grow above the seed potato. But if you plant them shallow, they have a very narrow area to make potatoes in, significantly reducing production. This means in container gardening you need to put them at the very bottom of a 1'-6" (0.45 meters) tall container to get a full yield. I tried this method last year and doubled my production. I was putting them very close to the surface before last year. Also, potatoes need cool roots and won't produce anything at all if their roots are too hot in the container during the summer. Afternoon/evening shade is a must in Southern US zones or other hot environments. Or you could insulate or shade the container.

- Christian

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