How to grow potato plants from sprouted potatoes

Since building our garden bed, I knew that I wanted to grow our own potatoes. Stephen and I eat potatoes throughout the year pretty frequently, and I thought it would be great to have some from our own stash. Surprisingly, it's pretty simple to plant and grow your own from potatoes that are usually thrown away.

Personally I've been more aware of food waste, and I felt that planting sprouted potatoes was a great way to "repurpose" something that is usually thrown away. I purchased a bag of red potatoes from my local grocery store. The potatoes that went unused for several weeks and stored in my pantry became the perfect candidates to test out growing sprouted ones in cardboard boxes.

I did a little research prior to planting just to make sure I had everything necessary to get started. The particular YouTube video that was most helpful was a gardener who experimented with planting sprouted potatoes in varies vessels. He wanted to see which vessel was best suited for maximum growth. Because potatoes grow underground, a wide and deep cardboard box proved to be the best way, even more so compared to a garden bed. Jag Singh from Daisy Creek Farms (from the YouTube video) lives in California, and it rarely rains in his area. One of the changes I made before planting my potatoes in the boxes was to cover the cardboard box with plastic to protect it from rain and add drainage holes at the bottom.

Another change was, that I cut the potatoes and only kept a small piece where it started to sprout, and let them dry out prior to planting. I also tried planting the entire sprouted potato without allowing it to dry out before planting.

The main take-away that I learned is that we should definitely plant sooner in the season, so that there is enough time before the first frost. We planted at the end of July and our first frost was at the end of October, so there wasn't quite enough time before it became too cold. The second take-away is that we need to let the potato completely dry out prior to planting. The plants that successfully grew were the ones from the cut dried piece of potato.

Materials needed:

-Wide and deep cardboard box

-Plastic (enough to cover the box)

-Sprouted potatoes (that have been dried out)

-Soil

-Fertilizer

Overall, it's really exciting that Stephen and I can easily have more food from our own garden throughout the year. In the future I would love to have a greenhouse were we can have fresh vegetables, herbs, and possibly even fruit throughout the year. I'll share a recipe soon about different ways to cook potatoes.

I hope this encourages you to plant something new in the upcoming spring and fall season.

Happy Planting,