Potatoes from your own garden - just planting the seed potatoes makes you look forward to the fresh tuber. No prior knowledge is required, the necessary work is easy to manage and the harvest is eagerly awaited every year.

Space for the potato field

A bed in a sunny location with loamy or sandy soil is ideal for growing potatoes. All other soils are also suitable, heavy soils can be used e.g. loosen up with sand. Whether you dig up the whole garden at once or create a smaller bed depends on how many potatoes you want to grow.

In a 3m long row there is space for 10 seed potatoes at a distance of 30 cm. If you create a second row at a distance of 60 cm, that makes 20 seed potatoes. The harvest quantity is about tenfold.

Preparation of the bed

Once the location has been chosen, you start digging up the potato bed for the next year in autumn. You apply manure to the coarse clods of earth and leave it all over the winter.

In the spring you break up the clods with a cultivator and work in the remaining manure.
If you have raked everything smooth, you draw furrows at a distance of 60 cm.

Compliance with crop rotation

If you want to achieve optimal yields every year with potato cultivation, you have the choice between continuous fertilization with mineral fertilizers or compliance with crop rotation.

Crop rotation, especially in four-field farming, makes optimal use of the nutrients in the soil, protects against over-fertilization and naturally maintains the soil's productivity. To do this, you need four beds on which you alternately plant vegetables.

For the cultivation of the potato this means:

  • Potatoes are grown in the first year. They are heavy feeders and deplete the soil.
  • In the 2nd year, medium consumers follow, e.g. carrots, spinach and lettuce.
  • In the 3rd year, the nutrients are still sufficient for weak consumers such as onions, beans and herbs.
  • Fallow or green manure in the 4th year with vetches, clover or lupins

Change of bed as protection against diseases

Pathogens can overwinter in the soil and re-enter the tubers the following year, especially if unharvested tubers remain in the soil. That is why it is unfavorable to grow potatoes on the same bed two years in a row.

bed neighbors

When cultivating your garden beds, you should also pay attention to a balanced mixed culture. Plants growing side by side share soil and nutrients and need space to spread roots and leaves. Therefore, you should grow plants around the potato that harmonize with them.

  • good neighbors: beans, cabbage, kohlrabi, spinach, marigolds
  • bad neighbors: tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, peas, celery, squash

tips and tricks

Keeping a garden book makes it easier for you to keep to the crop rotation. Here you write down every year which vegetables you have grown on which bed.

Category:

Vegetable garden