You can plant sprouted potatoes right out of your cupboard and by mid-to-late summertime, you’ll have a crop ready to eat!
Don’t throw those sprouting potatoes away! It’s super easy to plant them and get them growing to feed your family. This is one of those perfect things to plant when you have no seeds on hand but you’re wanting to start a Victory Garden.
If you have a large pot or a clean 5-gallon bucket, that would be ideal. If you don’t have potting soil, you can use dirt from your yard. Just break it up well.
Some say if you have a potato with multiple eyes, you should it into pieces and plant each eye as its own potato plant, but one of my favorite gardening YouTubers says it has worked well for him to plant the whole potato.
Follow these steps to plant sprouted potatoes:
- Ideally get a large pot or clean 5-gallon bucket with holes drilled in the bottom for drainage.
- Fill bottom of bucket with about 4 to 6 inches of dirt. Do not fill it up all the way — not yet, anyway. As the sprouts grow and produce green shoots, you’ll add more dirt and continuously cover the sprouts as they get more leaves. Eventually, you’ll have filled up the whole pot or bucket.
- Once the soil and potato plant has grown past the rim of the pot, just water regularly make sure it gets plenty of sun.
- Eventually the potato plants will get quite tall. When they begin to look like they are falling over and turning brown, it’s time to harvest!
- Planting directly in the garden: If you have a garden already prepared, that’s great! You might already have sprouted potatoes planted. If not, you’ll want to make sure you plant your sprouting potatoes in a trench. Keep the seed potato covered and keep mounding up soil or some kind of covering over the plants to ensure the growing potatoes are not exposed to the sun.
- ⚠️ Avoid planting potatoes that appear unhealthy! Store-bought potatoes will sometimes have blight or potato scabs. Throw those away — and not in your compost pile! Do not try to grow them. You’ll wind up with diseased potatoes, and worse, you may infect the rest of your garden!
