The Best Way to Plant Potatoes and Onions
Finally, gardening season has begun. The weather was at last dry enough for tilling up the dirt in our garden.
Time for planting!
What have we planted so far? This weekend, we made a trip to the farm store and bought a bag of Kennebec Potatoes, red onion and white onion.
(Unfortunately, the weather took a turn for the coldest this weekend, but what was planted is still ok for a bit of frost.)
Here’s how you put out potatoes:
Slice the bag of potatoes up for planting. Just take a sharp knife and slice off each section of potato that has an “eye”.
When you are finished cutting up the taters for planting, you will have a bucket full of eyes to go into the ground.
I was asking questions about the process, and Papaw Fred gave me this bit of wisdom: “A blind man can’t go nowhere without eyes. Just like that tater has to have eyes to grow up out of there.” So the tater can’t see which way it’s going unless the eyes are facing up! This is how they are planted so they will grow.
Planting the Potatoes
Before my husband started planting, he chose the far end of the garden to put potatoes. He pulls a line from one end of the garden to the other to make his row level. (Tie a long string to sticks, and pull it tight to make a straight line.)
He then digs a trench for the taters.
The potatoes are planted, eye up, at least a foot apart. (His foot is bigger than mine, so I was planting them “too close together!” Sorry, my foot is smaller.)
Then, they are covered up and left to grow! We had two rows total of these potatoes.
That’s how you plant taters.
How We Plant Onions
Next, he had two bags of onions. One red and one white.
He put the leveling line out again and dug a trench for the onions. It ended up being enough onions for one row.
My husband plants the onions at least 2-3 inches apart. They are grown close together, because we use these onions for “green onions”. The bulbs will not become too big, so it’s ok to plant them close together.
This is just how my husband and his papaw like to plant. As they say, there are many different ways to skin a cat. So if you have different methods of planting, I’m sure it works fine, too.
That’s three rows so far in the humongous garden! I love writing about our garden and if you ever have any questions, shoot them our way! Stay tuned for more posts on what we’ve planted!
For more gardening and homestead tips, visit the posts in Farm Life.
