Grow Baby Red Potatoes - Choose a spot with full sun in an area of the garden you have not used to grow potatoes, tomatoes, peppers or eggplants in three years. Do this the fall before planting potatoes.
Cover the area you've chosen with compost, and work the compost into the soil to a depth of 6 inches. Baby red potatoes are planted in early spring as soon as the soil warms up to a daytime temperature of 51 degrees.
Grow Baby Red Potatoes
In the spring, when you're ready to plant, cut the certified red seed potatoes into chunks, making sure each chunk has two to three "eyes".
Plant your potato chunks in hills with two to three pieces per hill. Cluster your potato pieces together, and cover them with 3 to 4 inches of soil. The centers of the hills should be 1 foot apart. As an alternative, you can make a furrow 3 inches deep. Drop your eyes into the furrow 10 to 12 inches apart. Space the rows 24 inches apart.
When the potato plant sprouts, begin "hilling" soil or compost around the plant. When the plant reaches 3 to 4 inches high, cover half of the plant with soil. When the plant grows another 3 to 4 inches, cover half of the new growth with soil. Continue to do that until the plant is growing out of a mound of soil 4 to 6 inches high. Hilling the soil prevents tubers from being exposed to the sun. Once tubers are exposed to the sun, they turn green and develop a toxin. Green tubers need to be disposed of.
Baby red potatoes are a thin-skinned variety with a creamy texture and mild flesh. They are also called new potatoes and can be steamed, boiled or roasted. While small--about 1 to 3 inches long--they contain the same nutrients as a full-sized potato. All potatoes need loose (to a depth of 3 or 4 feet), well-drained soil with a pH of 5.2 to 6.8 for proper tuber development. Potatoes are plagued with a host of insect pests and bacterial diseases. Keeping your soil healthy by adding compost and rotating crops will minimize damage to your potato plants. Does this Spark an idea? - by eHow
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