Plan Now For Great Potatoes In Your Garden This Year

It’s getting time to plant potatoes.

Local gardening lore specifies George Washington’s Birthday, which is Feb. 17, as the ideal date to plant potatoes. But I’ve heard of folks planting spuds as early as mid-January. We’re due for a hard freeze this weekend and into next week. So I’ll probably wait until the cold weather passes.

But it’s a good idea to start looking for seed potatoes. Most farm and ranch stores and garden centers stock seed potatoes this time of year. In this area, we’re usually limited to a few staple varieties: Kennebeck (a white potato great for making french fries), Red Pontiac (a red-skinned, waxy potato), and Yukon Gold (a creamy, yellow-fleshed variety).

All of them grow well here.

In my experience, potatoes are the easiest crop to grow in the garden. Spring rains usually provide enough water to grow them without any irrigation. They don’t really require any special nutrients other than an application of all-purpose fertilizer at the time of planting. Once they get up and growing, I like to spray the foliage with liquid seaweed every couple of