New potatoes quickly satisfy our longing for this tuber. Before the gardener knows it, they are ready to harvest. Of course, when planting potatoes, everything must be well prepared and the seeds planted correctly.
How do you plant early potatoes correctly?
To plant early potatoes, choose suitable varieties, pre-germinate the seed potatoes and plant them in nutrient-rich, sunny soil in early spring. Care for the plants by hilling, weeding and watering if necessary until harvest in June.
Choose only suitable varieties
The numerous potato varieties are divided into early, medium and late bearing varieties. If you want to harvest potatoes early, you should also choose special early potato varieties.
The variety of varieties is large and requires a close look to see which of them best meets your needs. The following features help with the decision:
- Cooking properties: from waxy to floury
- Differences in crop yield
- Deviations regarding shelf life
- taste and color peculiarities
Tip
Garden centers, hardware stores and well-stocked supermarkets offer some pre-germinated varieties in good time in spring. Online retailers can fulfill special variety requests.
Pre-germinating seed potatoes
So that the harvest starts as early as possible, you should pre-germinate the seed potatoes if you have not already purchased them pre-germinated. Pre-germination leads to strong plants that produce around a fifth more harvest.
- pre-sprout in March
- Place tubers in boxes with moist soil
- store at 15 to 20 degrees Celsius
- keep it cooler after sprouting
- from a seed length of 3 cm, keep it cooler again to harden it off
Planting time
The ideal time to plant new potatoes is in early spring. They are released outdoors at the end of March or April. They only need about 90 days to be ready for harvest, which means the harvest season begins in June.
Tip
If you plant early potatoes in the greenhouse, you can advance planting by approx. 3 weeks.
Ideal soil
Potatoes are so-called heavy feeders. Early potatoes must have all the nutrients they need for tuber formation during the three months of their growing season. That's why the bed should be supplied with compost (€12.00 on Amazon) or horn meal early before planting.
The location should also be sunny, because heat and light, along with water, are two other factors that influence the harvest to our delight.
Planting instructions
Early potatoes are not planted as deep as other types of potatoes, otherwise the planting process is no different.
- Free the bed of weeds.
- Mark the rows with a string. The distance should be 30 cm.
- Dig a hole about 5 cm deep along the string for each potato. The distance between two holes should be 30 cm.
- Put a seed potato in each hole, the shoots should be facing upwards.
- Cover the seeds loosely with soil.
- After 2-3 weeks the first shoots will appear above the ground. Wait until they are about 15 to 20 cm tall.
- Hill up the potatoes and remove any newly grown weeds in this step.
Care until harvest
The bed is weeded and richly enriched with nutrients. This early in the year, enough precipitation falls from the sky to supply the potato plants with water. After piling up, there's not much left to do except wait for the harvest season in June.
If a long dry period unexpectedly occurs, you can water. Weeds should also be removed from time to time as they rob the potatoes of nutrients.
