Last edited by shiny on November 10, 2026. View history
Potato
How to sow potato: Direct seed outdoors after last frost. Each piece must have one eye.
Sun requirement for potato: Plant in Full Sun
Potatoes are starchy root vegetables in the Solanaceae, or Nightshade, family, which also includes tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers. They originated in South America, and spread to become a worldwide staple. The leaves and fruit are usually poisonous and the stem tuber is the only edible part once it is cooked. The potato can be cooked in many ways, brewed into alcohol, and also used as the basis for creating bioplastics. More growing information is available in individual species entries.
A plant grows with warmth, not with days. A growing degree day is one day's worth of useful warmth: how many degrees the day's average temperature is above the lowest temperature the crop grows at. Add them up from planting and you know how far along the crop is, whatever the calendar says.
Say that lowest temperature is 10°C. A day averaging 17°C gives 7 growing degree days. A day averaging 8°C gives none, as it is too cold for the crop to grow. That is why the same lettuce takes about 50 days in a summer and 90 in an autumn: it needs the same total warmth either way.
For potato, the FAO EcoCrop database gives a lowest growing temperature of 7°C and a shortest growing cycle of 90 days at its best temperature, about 1170 growing degree days to a first harvest.
Where you've told us where your garden is, we use this and the weather there to predict when your potato will be ready to harvest. We don't use it for how long a plant lives or when it finishes: we go by what members have logged for that.
Only plantings by members who have set their locations are shown.
by shiny,
I'm going to attempt to grow potato over winter. To prepare I'm going to do a full garden bed of mustard and then dig the greens into the soil. Add compost and blood and bone. I've never attempted potato over winter. It can get very wet here, and in …
potatoes
mustard
parsnips
carrots
by shiny,
I like to automate the calculations, analysis, and plain old remembering what has happened in the garden.
Some of the challenges in my garden is knowing when it's too late to planting something, if it will cope with the weather conditions here, and working out what is killing the [tomato](/…
broccoli
potatoes
carrots
by Mad_Martha,
This year wasn't a particularly good year in my garden. Due to my ill health through spring and summer, the only things that got planted were the potatoes, onions and elephant garlic, all of which were planted either late last year o…
potatoes
onions
elephant garlic
If sown now, expect a first harvest in about 90 to 160 days.
From the growing cycle in the FAO EcoCrop database, which is the same wherever it is grown.
Data from the FAO EcoCrop database for Solanum tuberosum L.
| Family / Taxonomy | Magnoliopsida Asteridae Solanales Solanaceae |
|---|---|
| Killing temperature | growth: 0 °C, rest: -1 °C |
| Life form | herb |
| Life span | annual |
| Habit | erect |
| Optimal soil depth | medium (50-150 cm) |
| Optimal soil texture | medium, organic |
| Optimal soil fertility | moderate |
| Optimal soil drainage | well (dry spells) |
| Optimal soil salinity | low (<4 dS/m) |
| Photoperiod | short day (<12 hours), neutral day (12-14 hours), long day (>14 hours) |
Resources outside Growstuff.
eggplant
marjoram
Photos
mustard
shiny harvested not specified.
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