EASIEST Way to Grow Potatoes | Seed to Harvest to Kitchen

In this video we're going to learn how to take a bunch of

potatoes

, one of my all-time favorite crops, and plant them directly in the ground. This is Kevin Espiritu from Epic Gardening, where my goal is to help you develop a greener thumb. These are truly one of my all-time favorite crops. I have six different varieties here. I'm going to show you all of them, but what we're going to do is plant them directly in the ground. I haven't done that, except one other time in 2019 in my survival challenge, where I grew maybe a hundred kilos of

potatoes

and tried to live off of them, as well as other fishing, foraging, that kind of thing.

I have a whole video on that. It's actually quite interesting. I lost a lot of weight and I lost a lot of muscle and I'm probably still dealing with the aftermath of that. So it is not recommended. But what we're going to do is take six different varieties and put them in the ground here, right next to the Epic Shed. So without further ado,

grow

that Like button and I'll multiply your potatoes by a factor of 10. And let's get into the video. The first potato on our list is the Chieftain potato. You can see we're already sprouting some eyes.

I'm not going to cut any of these mainly because I don't want to wait. But if you want, you can cut it in half, let it scab over, and you'll get extra

grow

th. Next. We have Tara Rose. This is a smaller, more beautiful potato. I'm honestly really excited about this one. I'm very excited about the French fingerlings here, a highly prized culinary potato. Once again, you are complaining. Chitting is the verb that refers to the eyes budding there. Interesting phrase, I don't usually use it much. Then we have Russet Burbank, the classic potato that we probably all see in grocery store bags.

Here we have a really small one. This is the Russian banana. Now, as the name implies, you can see that it is a kind of small banana-shaped potato that I am very excited about. I had never grown them before. And finally here we have the red Pontiac, which is a classic and you really can't go wrong. For me, the red ones are some of the most productive and that's why I have a decent amount of them. Here is the area I want to plant it in. It will be directly on the ground. You can see that I have already done some tests in this area.

And I have had incredible success growing potatoes directly in our homeland here in San Diego, California. It's a little heavier on clay and I'm going to use a modified Ruth Stout method. For those of you who don't know, Ruth Stout was a gardener a long time ago, who basically just dropped potatoes on the ground and covered them with hay. Now I'm not going to do exactly that. That's why I said modified. So the first thing I want to do is remember that I have six varieties and I have six potatoes in each variety. So I have a total of 36.

I'm not going to cut them at all. So what I want to do is measure approximately a six by six area. We are going to plant one approximately every meter. We're going to go pretty dense. So let's go ahead and get started. I want to start at the shadow line of the shed. I don't want too many shadows cast. Morning shadow, totally fine. But right now, around this line it's going to be perfect. And we're going to go up right to the beginning of the shed. We have our four. Corners. I've roughly cleared the area. Now, like I said, I've had success growing potatoes in this type of soil before.

They are a kind of pioneer crop. You can throw them in relatively bad soil and they will be fine. However, I can't really bury them in this. So I'm going to loosen it up a little bit. I'm going to throw rows six feet long down. I won't loosen it or fix it completely. Now, what Ruth Stout would have done is simply drop down and cover herself with hay or straw. I'm going to use straw. I'm going to modify that a little bit. I'm going to lose between four and five inches my dad. Personally, I've found that burying it a little deeper tends to be more successful and you don't have to worry about hilling it up, which is something Ruth Stout didn't do either.

So I'm not going to pile these potatoes, which is classic advice that I honestly think is too much effort for too little reward. So we have dug the basic structure of our trenches. I want to smooth out some of the inconsistencies in depth and remove some soil before I start planting. Alright, our trenches are dug. They are relatively uniform, about three or four inches deep. We can ride a little if we want, it's not necessary. I again found that planting about four inches deep and simply doing nothing but applying mulch will produce a good amount of potatoes.

So I have all my varieties here. Be sure to label them before placing them on the ground. But let's go ahead and get into it. Well, first we'll go in with our red Pontiacs. Eyes up and then we'll put it down here. I would say the space of about a foot, foot and a half is the absolute minimum. So let's try them here. Raise your eyes for obvious reasons: you don't want your plant to stop just because the eyes have to wander. For a better path on the ground. So just don't do that. We'll clarify some of this right here.

The last one will come in right there and then we'll cover them. And I'm going to go. These are here to label later. Next in this row is the critical element and that would be the mulch. Again, here I'm using a shredded straw mulch called GardenStraw, but you can use all kinds of things. With potatoes, it's really just a matter of keeping the soil moist, without having to worry about them too much. You want them to be a set-it-and-forget-it kind of crop. You don't want to have to manage them much because, again, they are designed to be an easy grow.

They are very easy to grow. So about three or four inches of mulch on top of this row. And then we'll rinse and repeat with the rest of our six different varieties. I've tidied up the beds a bit. I think they look very good. Maybe put a border here or something. But while I water them, just a few final thoughts on the planting phase of the potato process. Again, you don't necessarily have to wait for the eyes to sprout. That is a common mistake. Potatoes will come back if you forget them in the ground after

harvest

.

Therefore, they do not need to sprout eyes to reproduce. So I put a couple... these two here, they haven't been identified yet. It's totally fine. They will probably be a little slower on the shot. And again, I'm planting these semi out of season. The advantage of living in San Diego is that I can plant things a little out of season. And when it's ready to

harvest

, you all can probably start planting it. Which means the video comes out when it's actually useful to you, which is really nice. And I have to say, I feel like I'm finally living out my fantasy here at Epic Homestead of basically playing Harvest Moon or Stardew Valley in real life.

Shout out to anyone in the Comments if you play those games or have a kid who plays those games. Simply put, what a healthy way to spend your time, if you're going to spend it in front of the computer. A fantastic way to spend time. In fact, you learn a lot of real-world skills. And I have my potato crop here. So you want to water it. They don't need a ton of water when they're just starting to sprout because, again, they need to form roots first. Then the sprout will sprout and then you can start watering regularly.

But then again, if you live in an area with a decent amount of rainfall, you probably don't need to water much overall. In fact, even here in San Diego, I planted a lot of things in a similar way last spring, although it was on a friend's property and I just let the natural rain irrigate them. And I got 25 pounds of about five pounds of

seed

potatoes. And for me, that's a five to one ratio. I'm very happy with that. And without extra work, remember that without hilling or watering, it's free food. I mean, it really is free food.

I spent about an hour here today and will receive free food in about 80 to 110 days, depending on the variety here. Alright, our potatoes are in the ground. We have to give it some time. So next time I see you, we'll have some early shoots. And we will talk about care during the growth phase in which they take out all those stolons and form them. Those new potatoes. So it's been about 30 or so. 45 Days since we planted our potato

seed

. And I wanted to talk about just a couple of things that you might notice when you start growing potatoes at this early stage of growth.

Basically the stage in which the seed potato begins to sprout. It will come out of the ground and grow into what looks like a really beautiful potato patch. So I expect at least a hundred pounds of potatoes from this little garden. Now what you'll notice, up there in the foreground, is that those potatoes look a little stunted. Now why is that? Well remember, your potatoes are going to germinate. They will sting and are usually planted after they sting or after the eyes start to sprout some growth. Now, these four varieties here were already biting when I put them in the ground.

Those two over there weren't. But I wanted to plant them at the same time just to give you an idea that you can break some of these potato rules or these conventional gardening rules and it won't ruin your crop. It will just slow you down. So those took about three more weeks to come out of the ground. That's why they are stunted. They are not stunted. They are just slower. They are behind in time. So they will catch up very soon. Now, a couple of things we've done here to make sure this is one of our best crops of buried potatoes.

You will notice that there is quite a bit of straw on top. Now I used to have straw right at the end of the row where I was planting the potatoes. Now we go ahead and let it pass through these hills because we noticed that some roots started to creep towards the center. So we would rather hide it. And now, again, I'm following a modified Ruth Stout method where I don't stack these potatoes like crazy. You can see these potatoes right here, there's over a foot of growth here, I'd say about 18 inches of growth. And I haven't raised that stem.

I'm going to go with the lazy potato approach, where yes, maybe you'll get a little more yield by crowding it up and using a lot of extra land and a lot of extra work, frankly, but I really don't want to do that. . For me it was an easy crop to plant. I'm going to leave them sitting here and wait. Now what I'm going to do is add more straw as a mulch to make sure that the potatoes that start to form don't start getting the sun. We don't want to solarize these potatoes and actually turn them into what we call green potatoes, which are unhealthy to eat because of their high solanine content.

And so right now it's just a matter of keeping them well watered, making sure to add bits of straw here and there to cover anything you see worth protecting. And that's pretty much it. We'll be back in a bit to see when you know it's time to harvest. A few more weeks have passed. And there have been some updates, although it seems like not much has happened in the potato patch. Number one, Russian bananas, this small, low-growing one, has made a comeback. I mean, it was hit by a frost. It died out somewhat severely and now it's back.

So sometimes just waiting and not freaking out can be the solution. However, right next door, these French fry have a problem that I need to take care of immediately. So here are the French fry. And as you can see, we have these sort of mottled black spots on the leaves. It's not a pest, there are no real holes in the leaves or anything like that. And it's not a question of watering because then the rest of the plants would also be in trouble. This looks like a potato blight to me. Now you could spray the French fry with some type of organic fungicide.

However, I really want to eliminate the possibility of it getting anywhere else in this bed of potatoes. It seems that those are more susceptible. Maybe these can prevent it. Who knows? I prefer not to risk it. And the French fry have been on the ground for about 75 days or so. Then they will be new potatoes. Fingerling potatoes are highly prized, especially when they are young. I'm going to cut my losses on this particular row. And we're going to take the potato fork, which I've never used to harvest potatoes, I've used it for a lot of other things, and we're going to harvest this row to protect the overall crop.

So let's remove our little tag here and get it out of the ground. And with the potato fork, what you want to do is not harvest directly next to the potato because you're obviously clumping potatoes all over the place. And then you want to get in front and. Take it out like this. So let's do this very carefully. Remember that there are other potatoes here that we don't want to damage. So we want to go down. And go in, maybe give it a little kick and just get up. We'll see what we get. Oh yeah baby!

That's what I'm talking about. Beautiful. Oh oh oh. They are very delicious potatoes. These are cute. I'll be excited, just so you know, I'll always be excited about these potatoes. Holy cow, these are pretty. One plant, four good, five good. Oh! Yeah.Stumbled. I mean, he just looks at that perfection. Look at the size. Look at the color. Look at the structure. These are going to be absolutely delicious. Let's keep going. Here's a closeup. Oh. I just found another one. Holy. Holy shit, this is amazing. Well. Again, here's the base of the potato plant, right over there, right?

So you don't want to go in because we just saw how many potatoes we got out. You want to go to the front. Give it a little. Kick the ground for leverage. You don't want to stab these beauties. And then. Let's give it a good tug. See what we get. In this one, it seems they were lower than he thought. You have a. Oh. Yes, there we go. Two Three. Fitting, I'll do this at Easter because that's what it is. A treasure hunt. Four. This is what we end up with. Honestly, I'm really excited about this.

I planted five seed potatoes in that row about this size. And I don't know the weight yet, but they look beautiful. Number one, free of imperfections. I mean, they look absolutely delicious! It's going to be very tender and pleasant. And the rest of the entire harvest is already saved. So we have our French fry, which are going to come in. Check out the Epic Homesteading channel if you want to see what I do with these potatoes. But the rest of these still have some time left. I want them to grow in size and get great performance.

So I'll see you here in a couple of weeks. So we're back after about a week since we harvested these French fry. So they had a little light on them. And I have to say it was the right decision and they were absolutely delicious. Later I will show you one of my favorite potato preparations after we harvest it, which is exactly what we are doing. So how do you know when it's time to harvest potatoes? The most obvious indicator is the days to maturity for that particular potato variety. So at 85 days you might see 110, 115, 120 days or so.

And if it's been that long, as long as everything else has gone well, the potato should be ready to use. But there are a couple of visual indicators I want you to look for. So one of the key things to look for is the yellowing and dieback of the leaves, which we're seeing here. This could be a plague, but it doesn't actually look like the plague we just saw earlier in the video. For me this has already been enough. I feel this is a good sign. You're going to start seeing them die. You may see them brown a little.

They will fall a little. And what's happening is all the energy is actually being sent to those tubers to get those delicious potatoes that we want to harvest. So that's a very good sign. Sometimes you can even see potato berries forming, depending on the variety. The potatoes will form a berry. You don't want to eat that berry. But it will form here. You'll see some flowers and stuff. It's a good sign that you have new potatoes. When the berries form, fall, and plump, it's a good sign that the potatoes are almost ready to use. So let's harvest these.

What I want to do, the sun is setting, I need a little extra help. And I want to introduce all of you to someone who has been helping out a lot here at Epic Homestead, my garden manager Jacques. Hello, I'm Jacques. So Jacques is here. Jacques has been helping quite a bit. That's why he's getting so much done around here, because there's a lot to do in the world of Epic Gardening. Here we have your favorite trusty tool that you've been using for almost everything, Jacques, the potato fork. I've been waiting for the time to get potatoes with that thing.

He's been using it for everything BUT potatoes here in Homestead. And now we are going to use it with potatoes. So when you harvest potatoes, there are many ways to do it. So what they could do, let's take these Russian bananas for example, is just grab them by the base and throw them up and then they could go digging and hunting and that's completely fine. But if you want to have a little fun and a little spice, you can also go in with a potato fork, come to the front like we did before, and pull up.

So it's really a dealer's choice. You can do it any way you want. I'll give you this Jacques. Maybe start there again. Yes. I'm going to start over here. Oh, there he is, look at this guy! There are tons of little ones here. Interesting. Oh what a little, little, little tatie. So Jacques has found something in Chieftain potatoes. What have you found? Check it out. Check it out. Perfect potato. That's a beauty. That's a beauty. That's just the first one. That's easy too. Well. Come on, let's go POV. POV crop right here. There you go. There is another.

You'll probably have to dig there. A couple of small ones. A couple of small ones. If we don't see another big one, I'll be sad. Oh, that's the perfect potato. There we go, honey. Honestly, it's like Easter every day. It's like Easter. Keep giving. Keep giving, darling. Alright. I'm going to stop by and check mine out. Alright. So I'll go and take part in the red Pontiacs. And look at this. This is crazy. They're just piled up here. So I'm going to do the extract method here. We'll give it a quick tug. See what we get.

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. One two three. We don't stop, four of us and we never forget these little ones here. I call these taties. They are the little children. There are a couple of them here. Okay, that's a pretty good performance, but there's probably more to it. Yes. One. Oh my. Dude, check this one out. Oh, wow! That's a beast. Well. That's a big boy. So this trenching method. Remember, you saw what we put at the beginning. We'll probably put this in and we'll get it. Is this the highest yield per potato you could get? It's definitely not, but it's not work either.

So that's really the tradeoff that needs to be made. Well. The last row. Tara Rose, very happy with this one. These are the ones I put in before they bit, which is the outbreak. And they took a while to start, but they seem to be quite healthy. That could mean that they're actually a little bit behind, a little bit younger, so they're not turning yellow and stuff. That could mean the harvest will be smaller. Maybe it means the harvest is perfectly fine. So there's only one way to know and that's to go in and pick them up.

I'm quite optimistic about this. Tara Rose has an interesting color. It's kind of, I don't know, like a kind of crystalline red inside. It looks almost like a jewel. So let's pull it up and see what we have. None of that because they are all underground. It's much darker. Look at the darkness in this, much darker. Alright. Let's dig deeper here. Welcome to the bounty of potatoes. I will say I'm going to estimate probably around 40 pounds, maybe six to eight pounds of planted potatoes. Remember French fry should be here and I've even eaten some of those.

It's probably another 10 pounds. Really solid performance. Surely there were some problems. Like the Russet Burbanks they underperformed. I think I could have gone into them a little more. Russian bananas froze a little. You could see that the ones in the back were a little better. Those that were not hit by the frost. The ones in front were a little smaller. Alright. Now I only have delicate, delicate potatoes. So what I want to do is show you one of my favorite potato preparations called mashed potatoes, inside. Welcome inside my house. I rarely show you this, but here we are in Kev's

kitchen

and we're going to learn how to make my favorite potato recipe.

The one I probably make the most, second only to a restaurant-style hash brown, which I mastered during the Apocalypse Grow Challenge in 2019, where I lived off the entire garden. Potatoes were a staple crop. I have some French fry. I'm going to show you how to make mashed potatoes, not mashed, but mashed. So I have some potatoes here. These are our French fry. First we must boil this water, because we need to soften the potato to be able to crush it. So let's turn this on. We're going to mix in just a little bit of salt. Let's boil this and I'll be back in a second.

Alright. We are boiling. Let's put our three fry in, it'll probably take about 25 minutes to soften them. So I'll see you in another 25. While we wait for those taties to soften, let's go ahead and top off our rosemary and we'll use a little bit of this as a topping. So take a look. I've made a video about rosemary before. We can prune right here. Two lateral shoots emerge. So this will be very good. And top off the plants and we have a nice twig that we can use inside. Alright, we're ready to start with some delicious softened potatoes.

I'm telling you, this little mesh that goes over the sink is a lifesaver. We'll let these guys hang out and steam dry a little bit for maybe three or four minutes. So this is where you need to be in your game. This is the mashed part of the mashed potato. So I'm taking the lid off the same pan I used and you want to break it. The finer it is, the crispier it will be. And you want it to be uniform and not break up too much. So let's see if I can do that in this video here.

Oh, that felt good. That felt good. Well. It feels like a good hit. That's perfect, actually. Well. That's perfect. Check it out. Check it out. Well. Let's do this one. Oh, that's so satisfying. Satisfaction level 9,000, more than 9,000 in reality. Well. We enter with a little butter to which I will add a little bit of that rosemary that we chopped. Let's do a quick drizzle of butter. These are not healthy. I'll tell you right now because I'm pouring a lot of oil into them. Next we will make olive oil. We want the crunch factor to be at its maximum, absolute maximum.

I'll add a little pepper. And then I'm going to sprinkle a little bit with a little bit of salt. And I think we're ready to go. I preheated it to 390 Fahrenheit. We're going to go in for about 45 to 55 minutes and we're not going to turn them. See you soon. Alright. The moment of truth, my friends. Let's see if the crunchiness is at the levels we want. I mean, that sounds pretty good to me. Here we go. Almost three months of cultivation, actually a little more, but not a lot of work to grow these potatoes. And here they are sitting in front of me.

Let's do a little crunch here. Oh, that's going to be crispy. The thinner you get. That is. That's so good! It's really hard to describe. Increases flavor by 20% if you grow it yourself. If you cook it with tons of fat and oil, it increases the flavor by 20%. And it's so good and so easy to grow guys. Potatoes will never stop growing in my garden. I will always grow them. I hope this guide has been helpful. If you want to see more fun, funny cooking videos, stuff like that from Homestead, go to Epic Homesteading. I like to do these comprehensive growing guides from time to time.

From seed to harvest, to cooking. But it won't be very common here on the Epic Gardening channel. Go to Epic Homesteading to learn a little more about the inside of the house. But I hope you enjoyed the video. I'm going to enjoy the potatoes. I'll see you next time. Good luck in the garden and keep growing.