Harvesting & storing potatoes

When to harvest the potatoes?

• Early potatoes can be harvested as soon as you find the tubers big enough. Depending on the variety and when you planted them, the first harvest can be as early as late May/early June. As a rule, early varieties do not keep well.
• The medium-early varieties are mainly harvested in July & August.
  
• The late ones in September and October, always before the first frost. With the medium-early and late varieties, wait until the foliage has died off. This ensures that the potatoes harden off and will keep much longer.
  
  Attention: Remove all potatoes from the soil, including the small tubers. Otherwise they may cause the potato blight to be transmitted the following year.

How do you store potatoes?

In the past, the foliage was often removed by chemical means. This ensured that the potato hardened off earlier, so that there was less chance of, and less need for, spraying against the potato blight. Nowadays it seems that you can also simply cut off the foliage with similar results. After about two weeks the potatoes are sufficiently hardened and you can harvest them.

Do you want to keep the potatoes as long as possible? Then make sure to remove all damaged potatoes, no matter how small, from the pile. Carefully place the good potatoes in a dark, cool and frost-free place. Also make sure that they cannot get wet!

If you follow the above guidelines, you can keep your potatoes until March of the following year. After that, the quality will decline and we can start looking forward to the first early potatoes again!

Do you want to become a real potato master yourself? 👇

• Seed potatoes: which varieties to choose?
• 6 resistant seed potato varieties
• Pre-sprouting potatoes
• Planting or potting potatoes yourself?