- 2 months ago
Growing potatoes at home is easier than most people think, and this plain, practical guide walks you from seed potato to harvest with very little fuss. Elias explains how to sprout or chit seed potatoes, when to plant them whole or cut them into pieces, and why loose soil matters for bigger, smoother potatoes. He also covers spacing, planting depth, watering, hilling, and the simple mulch method for gardeners who want the easiest crop possible.
Along the way, you learn the real signs that potatoes are ready to dig: yellowing tops, dieback, and the difference between new potatoes and a full storage harvest. The video also shows how to dig from the side so you do not spear your crop, and why keeping potatoes covered from light matters for safety and quality. This is a useful potato growing tutorial for backyard gardens, raised beds, containers, and small-space food growing.
For anyone searching for potato growing tips, seed to harvest gardening, how to plant potatoes, hilling potatoes, mulch gardening, and easy home food production, this calm homestead lesson offers a clear, old-fashioned method that is simple to follow and easy to remember. It is especially helpful for gardeners looking for practical vegetable garden advice, beginner gardening guidance, and a low-cost way to grow more food at home.
Along the way, you learn the real signs that potatoes are ready to dig: yellowing tops, dieback, and the difference between new potatoes and a full storage harvest. The video also shows how to dig from the side so you do not spear your crop, and why keeping potatoes covered from light matters for safety and quality. This is a useful potato growing tutorial for backyard gardens, raised beds, containers, and small-space food growing.
For anyone searching for potato growing tips, seed to harvest gardening, how to plant potatoes, hilling potatoes, mulch gardening, and easy home food production, this calm homestead lesson offers a clear, old-fashioned method that is simple to follow and easy to remember. It is especially helpful for gardeners looking for practical vegetable garden advice, beginner gardening guidance, and a low-cost way to grow more food at home.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00Of all the crops a body can grow to feed a family, the potato may be the finest and the
00:05most
00:05forgiving, for it will grow in poor, rough ground, ask little of you, and give back a great heap of
00:12good, filling food that keeps all winter in the cellar. Folks make it out to be complicated,
00:19all fuss and rules, but the plain truth is, a potato near wants to grow, and your whole job
00:26is mostly to get out of its way. Today I will walk you through the whole of it, from the
00:31planting of
00:32the seed potato, clear to the digging of the crop, and knowing just when it is ready, the easy old
00:38way,
00:39so that with about an hour's work and a bit of patience, you can grow yourself a pile of free
00:45food out of the ground. I am Elias, and I have grown potatoes on this Lancaster County ground
00:52my whole life, and filled many a cellar with them, for they are one of the great keeping crops,
00:58food you grow once and eat on for months, and they are about the easiest crop there is,
01:05if you know the few plain things that matter, and do not fret over the rest.
01:10So let me give you the whole plain guide. Quick word before I go further. The old methods my family
01:18uses, there is more of it than fits in any one video. I gathered the whole of it into a
01:24book
01:24at EliasYoder.com. The book is the long version. If you want it, it is there. I will not mention
01:33it
01:33again. My grandmother used to say the potato was the poor man's friend, the crop that never let a
01:40family go hungry, and she planted a good patch every single year without fail. I remember as a boy the
01:47digging of them in the fall, the whole family out with forks and baskets, and it truly was like a
01:54treasure hunt, every forklift turning up a fresh clutch of them, and us children scrambling to grab
02:00them from the soil. She would say a body who can grow potatoes need never go hungry, and I have
02:08found
02:08it true my whole life. So let me pass on to you what she passed to me, the plain easy
02:15growing of this
02:16humblest and most faithful of crops. We begin with the seed potato, which is just a potato you plant to
02:24grow more. You can use potatoes saved from your own crop, or ones bought for seed, and the improved
02:31kinds resist the sicknesses better. Now before planting, it is good to green them and sprout them
02:37a little, which the old folk called chitting. Just setting your seed potatoes in a bright, cool place a week
02:44or two, and they will put out short, stout sprouts from their eyes, those little buds, and get a head
02:51start. But here is a comfort. You need not fret if they are not sprouted yet, for a potato will
02:57grow
02:58whether chitted or not, it just comes up a bit slower if it is not sprouted. I have planted them
03:04both ways in
03:05the same patch, and the unsprouted ones simply came up two or three weeks behind, and then caught right up.
03:13So chit them if you can for a head start, but do not let it stop you if you cannot.
03:18Potatoes are
03:19forgiving. Now whether to cut them or plant them whole. A small potato, egg sized or under, you plant whole.
03:28A big one you can cut into pieces, each piece with an eye or two on it, to stretch your
03:34seed further.
03:35And if you cut them, let the cut pieces sit a day or two to scab and heal over before
03:41planting so they
03:42do not rot. But here is another comfort. You do not have to cut them at all. You can plant
03:48them whole,
03:49and save yourself the bother, and they grow just fine. So cut them only if you want to stretch your
03:56seed,
03:56otherwise whole is easiest. Easy is the theme of the potato. Now the ground and the planting.
04:05The potato is what the old folk called a pioneer crop, meaning it will grow in rough, poor ground
04:12that other crops would sulk in, breaking up and improving the soil as it goes. So you need not have
04:19perfect ground. That said, it does want the soil loosened some so it can swell its potatoes.
04:26For a potato can only grow as big as the soil lets it. So hard-packed ground gives small,
04:33knotty potatoes, and loose ground gives big, smooth ones. So loosen your row a bit, dig it over,
04:40and if your ground is heavy clay, work in some compost and old leaf mold to lighten it. But you
04:47need not loosen the whole patch, just the rows where they go. Then dig your little trench or holes about
04:53four
04:54or five inches deep and set your seed potatoes in with the eyes and sprouts pointing up so they grow
05:01straight up to the light and do not have to waste time turning themselves around. Space them about a
05:06foot to a foot and a half apart, for they want room to make their crop. Cover them over, and
05:12that is the
05:13planting done. Now here is a thing I will be straight with you about, the hilling. And there are two
05:18honest
05:19ways to go. The old traditional way is to hill your potatoes, that is, as the plants grow up you
05:25mound soil
05:26up around their stems, burying more and more of the lower stem, and this grows you more potatoes. For the
05:33potatoes form along the buried stem, so the more stem you bury, the more potatoes you get. And it keeps
05:40them
05:40covered from the light besides. That is the way for the biggest crop. But there is a lazier way that
05:46trades
05:47some yield for a lot less work, and that is to skip the hilling and instead just lay down a
05:53thick blanket
05:54of mulch, straw, or hay, or leaves over the whole bed and let that mulch do much of the covering,
06:01keeping
06:01the soil moist and the potatoes shaded with no mounding labor. This lazy mulch way gives you a fine, easy
06:09crop
06:10with almost no work, though be honest with yourself that you will likely get somewhat fewer potatoes than
06:16the full hilling would give. So there is your choice, hill for the biggest crop or mulch deep and skip
06:23the
06:23hilling for the easiest crop. Either grows you good potatoes. I lean to a bit of both, a little hilling
06:30and a good mulch, but suit yourself and your back. If you do hill, here is how, that when your
06:36plants have
06:37grown up about eight inches or a foot tall, you draw soil up from between the rows with a hoe,
06:43and mound it up around the stems, burying the lower half of the plant, leaving just the top leaves
06:49showing. Then a few weeks on, when they have grown up again, you do it once more, hilling higher still.
06:56Two or three hillings through the season buries a good long stretch of stem, and all along that buried
07:02stem new potatoes form, so the taller you hill, the more you may grow. It is a bit of pleasant
07:09work
07:09with a hoe of a cool evening, and it does the double duty of keeping the crop covered from the
07:14greening
07:15light. Now that mulch does one job you must not skip however you go, and it is a matter of
07:20safety and
07:21worth knowing, and that is keeping the light off your potatoes. A potato that grows too near the surface
07:27and gets sunlight on it turns green, and that green on a potato is a signal of something in it
07:33that is
07:34not good to eat, that can make you ill if you eat much of it. So you never want your
07:39potatoes poking
07:40up into the light and greening. This is the whole reason for hilling soil over them, or laying that
07:45thick mulch, to keep them buried in the dark where they belong. So watch through the season, and any potato
07:52you see heaving up into the light, cover it back over with soil or mulch. Keep them in the dark,
07:58and
07:59never eat a green potato, just cut away any green part well, or toss it if it is much. That
08:05is the one
08:05real safety word with potatoes, and it is easily managed. Now the watering, and here the potato asks
08:12little. When you first plant, do not drown them, for they need to root before they shoot, and too much
08:19water on a bare seed potato can rot it, so just a modest watering to settle them in. Then as
08:25they
08:25grow up leafy and begin making their potatoes, they want a steady even moisture, not too dry and not
08:32soggy, and if you have a decent bit of rain where you are, you may hardly need to water them
08:37at all.
08:38Many a fine potato crop is grown on nothing but the rain that falls, and that is part of what
08:44makes
08:44them such easy, free food. So water them steady if it is dry, and if the rains come, let the
08:51rains do
08:51the work. Now to the part folks most wonder about, how to know when they are ready to dig. There
08:57are a
08:58few good signs, and the first is simply the time, for each kind of potato has its rough number of
09:04days
09:05from planting to harvest, some 80 days, some 100, some more, so if it has been that long you can
09:12start
09:13checking. But the plant itself tells you plainer than any calendar. Watch the tops, the leafy green
09:20plants above ground, for when the potatoes below are done growing, the tops begin to yellow, then to
09:27brown and wither and flop over and die back. That yellowing and dying back of the tops is the great
09:35sign, for it means the plant has finished its work above and sent all its strength down into the potatoes
09:42below. So when you see the tops yellowing and dying down, your potatoes are ready or near ready. Some kinds
09:52will flower, and even form a little green berry up top after the flower, which you do not eat, and
09:58when
09:59those berries form and drop, it is another sign the crop is made. So watch for the tops to yellow
10:06and die
10:07back, and that is your call to dig. Though I will say you need not wait for all that if
10:14you want some early.
10:16A potato dug young, before the tops die back, gives you what folk call new potatoes, small and tender
10:24and thin-skinned and a great delicacy, so you can sneak a few early for the table and leave the
10:31rest
10:31to size up. But for the main crop to store, wait for the tops to die back so the skins
10:39set firm and thick
10:40for keeping. Now the digging itself, and here is the one bit of care, for it would be a shame
10:48to spear
10:49your fine potatoes with the fork after all that growing. So do not dig straight down right at the
10:56plant, where the potatoes are clustered thick, for you will stab them. Instead, come in from the side,
11:03a good foot out from the stem, and drive your fork or spade down there where there are no potatoes,
11:10and then pull back and up, lifting the whole clump of soil and potatoes up from below, and rolling them
11:19out onto the ground. Then you get down and hunt through the loosened soil with your hands for
11:25every last one, for they scatter and hide, and it is a fine treasure hunt, the children love it.
11:33Come in from the side, lift from below, and hunt them out by hand, and you will bring them up
11:40whole
11:40and unspeared. Now let me say a small plain word, not a who-profits sermon, for the potato is no
11:49one's
11:50scheme. But mark how little all this cost. A few seed potatoes, an hour to plant them, some mulch,
11:59and mostly the rain and the sun and time. And out of that comes a great heap of good filling
12:07food that
12:08will feed you for months. There is near no crop that gives so much for so little, and it is
12:16a plain wonder
12:17that folk buy sacks of them at the store, when a corner of ground and an hour's work would grow
12:23them
12:23a winter's worth for almost nothing. The old people leaned on the potato for just that reason, that it
12:31was cheap and easy and filling and kept well, honest food a poor family could always grow.
12:39That has not changed. The potato is still the easiest free food there is.
12:47So there is the whole of growing potatoes the easy way. Sprout your seed if you can, cut them or
12:55not as
12:55you please, plant them eyes up a hand deep in loosened ground a foot apart. Hill them for the biggest
13:04crop or mulch them deep for the easiest, and keep them always covered from the greening light. Water
13:12them steady or let the rain do it. Then watch for the tops to yellow and die back, dig them
13:20from the side
13:21so as not to spear them, and hunt out your treasure. Do that, and for about an hour's work and
13:28a bit of
13:29patience, you will dig yourself a great pile of good potatoes, free food from the ground, and wonder you
13:37ever thought it hard. Now I want to hear from you. Tell me down below whether you grow your own
13:45potatoes,
13:45and which way you favor, the hilling or the lazy mulch way, and what kinds do best in your ground,
13:53for the potato grows a little different everywhere. And tell me your county and your soil, for I do love
14:00to know
14:01where you all are digging your treasure. I read every one. Next time I want to show you the keeping
14:08of your potato
14:09harvest through the winter. The old way to cure them and store them down cellar, so they keep firm and
14:16good
14:16for months, and feed you clear to spring. For a potato stored wrong spoils fast, and stored right
14:25lasts near the whole year. The old people grew their potatoes by the plain easy way handed down,
14:33leaned on them for cheap, filling, honest food, and filled their cellars every fall to carry them
14:39through the winter, secure in a crop that near never failed them. There is a deep comfort in that,
14:47in a food so easy and so sure, that a corner of ground and an hour's work will feed you
14:54for months.
14:55The people who built this country with their hands knew that, and we are only just starting to remember it.