Grow Potatoes Indoors: How To Harvest and Cultivate Crops

Grow potatoes indoors is a process that would come in handy when you know how and when to use them. These days people are very much into eating healthy and growing their own vegetables and potatoes are one of such vegetables.

Fortunately, potatoes grow well inside and do not take up much space or create a mess, so if you want to start growing your own potatoes, you should definitely go for it. In this article, we bring you a very beginner-friendly process on how to grow potatoes indoors and also how you can maintain an indoor potato plant, keep reading to know all about it.

How To Grow Potatoes Indoors in Easy Steps?

To grow potato plants indoors, you must first choose a potato variety, extract and prepare the seeds. Then you can select a suitable container, plant the seeds in the container, and lastly, take care of the potato plants and maintain the required conditions.

Potatoes are a great vegetable to be grown inside. They come in a whole lot of varieties and basic conditions that when met can help your potato plant to grow in the best way possible.

You will need all the basic tools for gardening including the selection of one of two methods of growing potatoes: the seed method or the nodules method. Both of these methods work fine in any setting and are not dissimilar to one another.

1. Choose a Potato Variety

The first step in growing potatoes indoors is choosing the right type of potato variety. There are many different types of potatoes, each significant in their own manner, taste, and cooking.

The most common potato varieties are petite potatoes, fingerling, blue or purple potatoes, white potatoes, russet, gurney’s seed potato yellow finn, and red potatoes. The petite potatoes are as the name suggests, petite in size and grow very well indoors and so do the blue or purple potatoes, but these are great if you want to grow them with the right requirements.

The best variety of potatoes to grow indoors is fingerling. However, you must be very keen on picking the variety whose taste and nature you like best. The best thing about selecting any potato variety is that they can be grown in generic conditions and do not require specific handling or growing techniques.

2. Prepare the Seeds or the Nodules

You can grow potatoes either by using seeds or a potato with sprouts coming out of it. The most effective among them is the potato with the sports. You can simply find a sporting potato or leave it out until it starts sprouting; in this case, you should note that such potatoes will be able to grow into fully functional potato plants, either indoors or outdoors.

Chitting is the process by which the potatoes are led to grow sprouts. All you need to do is form a cut at the eye of the potato and keep it near sunlight and air in a container like an empty egg carton. On some days, the potatoes will start to sprout from near the eye, which is why you must make sure to use half a sprouted potato in the pot.

In case you do not want to use potatoes and want to use seeds, you can get them from the gardening shop. They are very inexpensive and work just fine. You might need to germinate them before you can plant them.

Note that you can propagate potato plants indoors by using the method of tubing. The little nodules on a mature potato come in very handy in such situations. The small nodules can be taken and planted to gain new potato plants.

The nodules will grow and form a fully sprouting potato that is fit for consumption or can be used for further potato growing purposes. This vegetative propagation can work well for any vegetable or fruit with tubes or nodules.

3. Choose The Right Container

The next step after selecting the way of plant propagation is choosing a container. These plants are great for indoors only when the container that they are in is perfectly chosen for their optimal growth.

The ideal container for a potato plant indoors will be a plastic bucket but a terra cotta pot or a plastic bag with potting soil may also work fine. In terms of capacity, the container can hold around 2.5 gallons, and this would be a great fit for them to grow indoors.

If you select a container smaller than this, the result will be a very distorted plant with few or no potatoes and jumbled-up roots. This is why a good container size is very important for the good growth of the potatoes inside.

Another point to remember while picking out the pot, it should have proper drainage holes. The potatoes do not like long-term dampness, so whatever pot you decide should have a good drainage system.

The drainage system allows the soil to have the water it needs and will expel the rest of it, allowing the soil to dry quickly and firmly. This will also allow the roots to soak up the necessary water and maintain their nutritional requirements.

4. Plant Them

Now that you have the potato variety, the chosen method of propagation, and the optimally conditioned container, all that is left to do is plant the seed or the sprouted potato. Star by filling the container with good soil rich in nutrients and color.

If your garden soil is not of good quality, you can get some from your nearest gardening shop. Note that this is a key requirement that you cannot miss, so fill the container up to half of its entire height.

Place the half-cut sprouted potato or the seeds in the middle of the soil and start filling the rest of the pot with the soil. Make sure you go up to three-quarters of the entire length of the pot, and now you must lightly tap the soil in place.

5. Provide the Correct Care

After potting the plant keep an eye on it for several starting days. Look out for any changes in the color of the soil, the container, and the sprouting potato. Water the plant lightly because, in this situation, less is more. Potato vegetable plants are prone to beetles, fleas, and aphids so keep them in check, because you shouldn’t let them grow and destroy the crops.

If you keep on going with the same conditions, your potato plant will start giving you potatoes in a few weeks. Just make sure to keep the conditions steady and go easy on the watering.

If you see that the leaves are turning yellow, it is the fact that you are overwatering them The water is retained in the soil, which is causing water logging, so this, in return, is depleting the oxygen levels in the soil.

The low oxygen levels will cause a nutrition shortage in the whole plant, causing the leaves to become yellow. The yellow plants are also characteristic of the fact that soon the plant will be dead if nothing is done to curb the stressful situation for the plant.

The first thing you need to do is to allow the soil to become dry, but again, remember that you must not water it for some time, and slowly, the yellowing of the leaves will start to fade away.

6. Harvesting at the Right Time

The best time to harvest potatoes from your plantation is when their roots have dried completely, and the potatoes appear firm. The dead and dried roots and vines are the characteristic property of the time when these crops are at the most optimal moment of harvesting.

However, be very detailed, because if the vines are still a little green and are showing any signs of life or growth, you should steer clear of harvesting any potatoes because may be immature at the time. The best time of the year to harvest potatoes is between the months of August and September, so in these months, the weather complete;y dries out the potato plants’ roots and vines, indicating that they should now be harvested.

Conclusion

In this article, we talked about a beginner-friendly process of growing potatoes indoors and what you can do to be successful but in case you missed anything, here is a short and informative review.

• You can grow potato vegetable plants indoors by first choosing a potato variety, extracting and preparing the seeds, and choosing a suitable container.
• Planting the seeds in the container, taking care of the potato vegetable plants and maintaining the required conditions.
• A typical potato plant container should have 2.5 gallons of capacity.
• The sprouted potatoes serve as great plant starters.
• Potato plants are one of the easiest plants to grow inside and even so for a beginner gardener. You will only require a few of the most common gardening tools.

Here we come to the end of the article about growing potatoes indoors. We hope this article was informative for you; now you can grow your own potatoes quickly.