Best Time to Dig Potatoes
Cindy who grows her garden in Apopka, Florida recently raised a question regarding the best time to dig potatoes:
“Yesterday we discovered that all three of our plants now have produced potatoes. My question is when is the right time for us to dig up our crop? We have noticed that we still have a few babies that have yet to form into larger spuds.”
“We live in Florida and so I know that if we were in the Northern States that we’d be digging our crop up towards the fall. This is like the end of January and so my question would be… when do we dig them up? We have both red and white potatoes.”
Potatoes can be dug up and harvested whenever they reach the size that you wish to use. Some gardeners sneak a few of the small ones to enjoy as baby potatoes. Just keep in mind that the more baby potatoes harvested earlier, means you’ll find fewer full-sized ones to dig up later in the season.
Here in the north the potatoes can be left in the ground until after the potato vines stop growing and begin to die back in late summer or fall. That’s a sure sign that the potatoes have finished growing and are ready to be harvested.
Prior to harvesting keep any tubers that become exposed covered with soil to prevent the sunlight from turning them green, and don’t leave the potatoes in the sun for long after they’ve been dug up from the garden.
After the potatoes have been dup up and harvested brush the soil off, but don’t wash them until you’re ready to use them. Washing can reduce the storage life and encourage mold. Store potatoes in a cool, dark area after harvesting but avoid refrigeration.
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April 30th, 2006 at 3:15 pm
I dig potatoes after the vine is all dead. No green is left in it. I lay them out on the lawn on a good dry day and dry the dirt off if they are wet and muddy at all. I then brush the dirt off and put in a heavy duty card board box. I put the white potatoes in one box red in another one etc to seperate them. I keep them in a cool dry place in the winter other wise they will sprout to soon and get soft. If I have any left by planting time I replant them out.
April 17th, 2009 at 2:35 pm
My plants are now about a foot tall. can I dig a few new potatoes anytime. I think I remember that they have to bloom first I live in Dallas TX
May 19th, 2009 at 7:51 pm
I just dug mine up a few days ago. The plants had started turning yellow but they never did bloom. I live in Fort Worth.
We had several good sized potatos only after a couple of months in the earth.
July 18th, 2009 at 7:15 am
I planted 3 rows of kennebec potatoes, which is a fairly lightly colored white skin potato. These were in the ground a while and plants grew before I planted 2 rows of red skin potatoes beside them. I just recently dug up all 5 rows. I have no white potatoes, all 3 rows of white potatoes, and they were white when i planted them, but all 3 rows came out of the ground red. I have talked to several people that say they have never heard of something like that happenning. The potatoes are all good. We canned 14 quarts of the small ones and have a bushel left to fry and stew.
July 18th, 2009 at 8:40 pm
I have never heard anything like that either! There’s no way that I know of that the white potatoes could just turn into red potatoes at harvest time.
September 12th, 2009 at 10:05 pm
two years ago I planted white potatoes and they harvested red??? Nobody had heard of it when it happened to me either. I only planted white so I don’t even know where the reds came from.