You don't need your own private Idaho to grow potatoes.
Greg Lutovsky, who has been growing potatoes as a business since 1993, says you can grow 100 pounds of potatoes in 4 square feet. All it takes is some lumber, seed potatoes and careful attention to watering.
A usual method of growing potatoes is to dig a trench, plant the seed potatoes in the bottom and then shovel the dirt back in as the plant grows, covering about a third of it.
"A lot of people think you plant a potato and that the new ones grow below it, but that's not so,"Lutovsky said. "Potatoes grow between the seed piece and the above-ground plant."
So in the trench method, the new potatoes develop in the soil that is shoveled back in.
To save space, Lutovsky recommends building a box and planting inside it, adding sides to the box as the plant grows and filling the new space with mulch or soil.
When the plant blossoms, it starts setting potatoes in this added soil. Soon after that, you can start removing the bottom boards from your box and "robbing"the plant, reaching in carefully and pulling out new potatoes.
Unless you steal all of them during the growing season, in the fall you should end up with a box of spuds — as much as 100 pounds, said Lutovsky.
