It’s Potato Planting Time | The Survival Gardener

We’ve experimented with planting potatoes as early as January 29th here.

Potatoes appreciate cool weather, but also don’t like hard frosts. This is an issue in Lower Alabama and North Florida, as the weather in later winter swings between 20 and 70+ degrees, often proceeding for weeks without a frost and then suddenly diving well below freezing.

It’s rather ridiculous.

However, potatoes aren’t usually killed by a frost – just set back.

And if you’re ready with some sheets or a layer of straw or leaves, you can protect them through the freezing nights while allowing them to grow through the pleasantly cool weather.

That was our potato patch last winter/early spring, right before an overnight frost event.

We ultimately harvested 232lbs of potatoes.

We’re not great at getting high yields from potatoes for some reason. We probably planted near 100lbs of seed to get that many potatoes. I’m not sure why, but we’ll add more compost this year and see if we can raise those numbers. You should harvest roughly 10 times the amount planted! We’re always doing poorly. Potatoes are not an ideal crop here.

Yet we try, try again.

The Farmer’s Almanac moon-planting calendar says today and tomorrow are good days for planting.

Alright, then, let’s go.

We plan on putting potatoes into the Grocery Row Gardens, as well as into dedicated potato rows.

This year we’re planting 15lbs of Red Pontiac, 15lbs of Kennebec, and some 15lbs of Adirondack Blue potatoes.

We’re also planting 50lbs of Yukon Gold, as Rachel loves those.

Come on, 10-1 yields – this is the year!