This is a guide to growing potatoes, with a slight emphasis on potato growing in a Mediterranean climate.  Many of the potato growing tips though, are universal.  Just ignore the bit about hoping for rain if you live somewhere with wetter summers!

Those of you residing in our corner of the globe may have noticed that the humble potato is often of pretty poor quality here.  I grant you things have improved the short time we’ve been here but still there is not the world of quality and variety in the honest spud you find in other parts of the world.  I’d hazard a guess that the potato just likes things cooler and most definitely wetter and that Spain just isn’t the ideal home for them.

That being said you can grow good quality potatoes in Spain and its not too difficult.  It just takes a lot of muck, a fair amount of water, a spot of shade (if you can find any) and you should be able to supply yourselves with at least a few months of delicious potatoes at very little cost.  I have to say the whole concept of earlies and lates is best left to those countries renowned for their potatoes.  Here its best to just worry about getting the potatoes to grow between the cold weather and the ridiculously dry hot weather.  This is gardening not farming so I’ll assume you don’t have a field under plastic with an irrigation system to match.

How To Grow Potatoes

Prepare the Potato Beds and the Potato Tubers:

• In the autumn or winter prepare your bed.  This should be an area that hasn’t seen potatoes during the last three years.  You want to incorporate lots of well rotted manure or compost.  We try to get 50% muck to soil.  This earth should be rich and airy – you don’t want those spuds struggling.  If at all possible have your potato bed somewhere that gets some dappled shade.  This will help your spuds cope with the strong Spanish sunshine.  The soil needs to be free draining too or else the tubers will rot and you’ll have wasted your time.
• Two months before the last frost (here its early January) purchase your seed potatoes.  Seed potatoes are simply little potatoes and in all honesty you could just select some potatoes from your kitchen for this.  However the varieties in your supermarket may not like conditions in your area so it is perhaps a safer bet to buy your seed from a local agricultural supplier.
• Now you need to ‘chit’ your seed potatoes for about six weeks.  They should be packed into trays / boxes with the ‘rose’ end uppermost.  That just means putting the bit with the most eyes facing upwards.  The seeds want light but not direct sunlight.  They don’t want to freeze but equally don’t want to bake so put them in a light frost free room away from direct sunlight.
• In around six weeks you should have lots of short sturdy shoots forming, these will be the basis for your new plants.  If the shoots are very long and straggly it will either because they were too dark so struggling for the light in which case just try not to break them when planting.  If they did have some light the straggly shoots can be the sign of a virus so best to bin them and grow some others.
• Alternatively you can cheat and purchase your seed potatoes already chitted in late Feb / early March (or whenever your last frosts are forecast).  I feel I should admit that our best crops have actually come from seed potatoes bought in March that had very little sprouts but not the full blown chitted bonanza you can create at home.  I feel a fraud but there you have it.  So you decide what’s best for you but this year I’m cheating again!
• Early spring after the last frost date (or a few weeks earlier if you can spare some protection for your potatoes) is planting time (here that’s late Feb, early March).  You want to plant each potato, sprouty end uppermost, about 12 inches apart in the bottom of a 6″ trench.  The potatoes should be covered with at least 4 inches of soil.  Between each trench should be a mound of earth excavated from the trenches.  This will be used later on to cover the plants and ‘earth up’ your potatoes.

Looking After the Potato Crop

• Your potatoes may benefit from feeding once or twice during the growing period.  Blood & bone, seaweed extract.  However if your soil is being improved anyway by organic methods of enriching with compost or manure there shouldn’t be any need for further feeding of the plants.
• Water regularly, especially at flowering time as this is when the tubers start to swell.  Scab (an unsurprisingly scabby blemish on skins) can be prevented by maintaining even soil moisture levels.  We find it is best to water early in the morning before the plants start sprawling, to make sure the water makes it to the soil and doesn’t just scorch the leaves.  From May onwards we’ll water them on every dry day.
• Earthing up can be carried out once or twice through the growing season, or more often as you prefer.  We earth up, by a small amount probably four times before harvesting.  The process is simply to move soil from the mounds between your rows, to cover the plants.  You can leave as little as 3″ of the plant peaking out of the soil.  This prevents tubers turning green and poisonous from sunlight, will suppress weeds and provide more room for more tubers to grow higher up the plant.  As you can see this is a task not to be skipped!

Harvesting and Storing Potatoes

• Once the flowers have bloomed you’ll have small, extra sweet, new potatoes.  You can harvest these as you wish to eat them.  Simply scrape back the soil from around the pants, pick your potatoes then redistribute the soil so the pants continue to grow.
• Once the stems of the plant are yellow and have died back for a few weeks, skins will have formed and the potatoes can be harvested en-mass.  If you fear blight it is worth cutting off the plants and removing from the bed two weeks before digging up the crop.  Blight is a favourite of the warm, wet summer so hopefully should not be an issue.  We haven’t seen it here yet!
• Fork out the crop carefully and leave to dry on the ground for a few hours to firm up the skins and give better storing properties.
• This bit is crucial.  You must sort through the crop, removing any damaged or scabbed tubers for immediate use.  Only put perfect specimens into storage as any damaged potatoes could risk your whole stored crop rotting.
• This bit is crucial too.  You must remove every tuber, however small, from the ground to prevent a build up of disease in your soil.
• Hessian sacks or wooden crates would be traditional places to store your potatoes.  We have found sturdy cardboard boxes are ideal.  Remember though the potatoes must be dry, dark, cool and frost free to store well.  We find it difficult finding somewhere particularly cool through August but our subterranean back room, though never cold in summer does pretty well.
• So far we’ve only grown enough potatoes to store them for around four months.  Though we’ve had no issues storing the spuds its just we eat them all by this time.  This year I’m aiming for much longer.

Non-Traditional Ways to Grow Potatoes

So that’s how you grow potatoes, traditionally, in the ground.  There are numerous other methods too, some of which are particularly useful if you don’t have much space or are  feeling experimental.  B

ins, tyres piled ever higher and higher and the ubiquitous blue 240 litre drum are all ideal containers for growing potatoes.  Be warned you must ensure fantastic drainage.  A vat of evil-smelling wet compost and rotten potatoes is an experience never forgotten!  Even growing potatoes, planted directly onto the soil then covered with hay  or straw is perfectly possible if you absolutely refuse to dig!

Raising plants to grow above ground means the soil will heat up more which is a bonus in some climates but not Spain’s.  So if going down this route you’ll need to think about where the container is to be sited.  Ideally some shade to ensure the potatoes don’t bake before harvesting.

Things to Watch Out For When Growing Potatoes

Scab is a likely issue in a Mediterranean climate as it thrives in drought conditions.  The way to avoid it, is to ensure the soil stays moist.  On the plus side scab may affect your ability to store spuds but it doesn’t affect the eating quality so you can still eat your potatoes, they just won’t look as nice.  Blight is more of an issue in wet, warm summers so you should be okay if growing in Spain.   The UK Potato Council is a great resource with photos and information on every pest, disease and disorder any potato could encounter.

Tobacco is a close relative of the potato.  So for all you smokers please wash your hands before entering the potato patch (or tomato or pepper patch for that matter), to prevent passing viral diseases to your crop.

Always check your potatoes in store regularly as any spoiled potatoes can quickly ruin the whole box/sack/clamp.

Potatoes can suffer from a multitude of problems but with good organic methods, crop rotation and  sunshine; I hope your main issue will be getting them formed and out of the ground before it gets too hot!

And Finally…

We cannot get potatoes to grow well through the hot summers here but I have a feeling with a bit of care we could get them to grow slowly through the autumn.  We rarely experience hard frosts so I am thinking of experimenting with some tubers planted in late August to see if we can have fresh potatoes for Christmas 2009.  I shall keep you informed.

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