Potatoes are a popular food with families, but they are not a common crop in the home vegetable garden. Let’s change that.

March is a great time to plant potatoes. The gardener’s rule of thumb is to sow them anytime from six weeks to just before the last frost.

Potatoes like a sunny spot. Prepare a fertile friable soil by mixing in well-rotted compost. Potatoes need a fertilizer high in phosphorus for root growth (10-20-10 formula). As plants grow, you may add a side dressing with superphosphate. Clemson Extension recommends a soil pH of 5.8 to 6.5. An excellent draining soil is especially important for underground crops.

Seed potatoes are the stock from which you cut the planting pieces with “eyes.” Garden centers and feed stores sell certified disease-free seed potatoes in 10- to 15-pound bags. Ask to buy a smaller quantity to fit the dimensions of your plot. A conventional home garden yield from a 30-foot row is 60 pounds or a bushel of potatoes!

In Columbia the mid-season Red Pontiac and late season Kennebec are prevalent varieties available. With so many heirloom varieties of every imaginable skin color, flesh color, texture, size, shape and flavor offered by online catalogs like Ronniger’s, Johnny’s and Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, it is fun and easy to experiment with new varieties.

Cut the seed potatoes into ice-cube-size chunks each with two to three eyes. To reduce fungus and rot, dust chunks with sulfur. Place a tablespoon of sulfur in a paper bag with the seed chunks and shake to cover. Allow cut piece surfaces to dry for three to five days.

There are many systems for growing potatoes: standard rows in the garden, raised bed, chicken wire cage, barrel, garbage can, bushel basket, fabric bag and tire towers. If you plant in rows, plant each chunk, eyes pointing up, 4 inches deep, spacing 12 inches apart. Cover pieces with 4 inches of soil.

Deputize a potato posse to patrol for the first signs of green foliage and to pull any weeds that germinate. When the foliage is 6 to 8 inches tall, begin mounding or hilling-up soil and compost around the stems, leaving about 2 inches at the top. Mulch the entire growing area with 6 inches of straw or pine straw to keep soil cool and moist.

The potato posse should capture and squish insect pests invading potato plants. Post bug shots in the garden of the Most Wanted: wireworm, flea beetle, leaf hopper, Colorado potato beetle and aphids.

As the potatoes grow upward, tubers are forming underground. Anticipate hilling up compost three or four times during the growing period and up until flowers appear. The potato posse should then be on the lookout for vine death, a sign that potatoes are ready to harvest.

Potatoes mature in 60 to 120 days depending on variety. The potato posse may use their hands to dig up surface potatoes through the layers of compost. Adults should use a spade fork to uproot the deeper tubers without bruising.

For those who have never sampled home-grown potatoes, they will taste like an entirely new vegetable. Your family may never touch store-bought spuds again.

- By Arlene Marturano