Potatoes Look Dead and Never Bloomed

Q. Thank you for all your help! New problem: my potatoes are all about dead. They looked great in the Spring, but they never even bloomed. Is there any hope? Why did they die? I have them in a raised bed.

Potato tuber forming from underground shoot (stem)
coming from the potato plant stem

A. It is really hard to say what is going on without more information but let me run down the ideal situation for you and maybe you can figure it out. If I were to take a guess, I would guess it may have to do with your soil or watering or both. The ideal soil is a sandy soil and not a heavy clay type of soil. Sandy soils allow for good tuber production, easy harvesting, fewer disease problems which attack the roots and irrigations that are easier to manage.

Potatoes growing with drip irrigation

Potato plants can be started by quartering your favorite potato tuber with a clean knife and letting the cut tubers heal for 48 hours inside the house or in a cool area. You can also dust the tubers with a fungicide if you like. The other way, a preferred way, is to buy potato “seed” (which is really small potato tubers or tubers that have been cut and allowed to heal) that have been officially “certified” to be free of diseases and viruses.

Of course this is more expensive but reduces the chances of disease in your potato plants.

Potatoes plants (and tubers for that matter) are sensitive to freezing temperatures. For this reason we plant potato “seed” very soon after we are fairly certain spring freezing weather has passed. This can be any time from early to the end of March in our climate. Planting later than March will probably not result in very good production. Potato seed is planted about two to three inches below the soil and about twele to 18 inches apart. If the variety of potato is a real vigorous grower then space them further apart (18 inches).

A better way is to sprout the seed before planting. This helps to get them off to a good start. You would sprout the seed in a shallow box in the house in a room that is warm and has plenty of light. Once the seed sends up sprouts that are a few inches long, plant them carefully in the prepared soil about two inches deep and about twelve plus inches apart. Water them in thoroughly. Make sure you have put a good high phosphorus fertilizer in the prepared bed and the soil has been composted well.

Once the potatoes have shown some good growth to maybe 12 inches in height, pull the composted soil around the plants so that only a few inches of potato plant is peeking above the soil. This is called hilling and is needed so that the potato stems send out side shoots where the potatoes will form. If you don’t do this you probably won’t have very many potatoes.  Keep hilling around the potatoes every couple of weeks as they keep growing above this soil that has been pulled around the stems. Keep the soil moist or mulch the potatoes so they don’t get knobby. I hope this helps.

You can harvest any time tubers have formed. Just carefully dig down around the stems and feel around for tubers, cut and remove.