Favorable days in April for planting potatoes 

Potato is a crop that must be grown even in the smallest garden for early production. In addition, its calorie content per 100 grams is only 61 kcal, and the content of nutrients is much higher than in the old one. You don’t need to conjure over it at all to make it tasty, just boil it and sprinkle with dill. The only drawback of young potatoes is that this seasonal product is very expensive, and when buying it in a store, we cannot be sure that ripening has not been accelerated in a way that is dangerous to health.

Young potatoes are best grown on their own and eaten from their garden. But what about the inhabitants of regions with a cold climate? Planting potatoes in April in areas where summer comes late will be the topic of our article. Of course, if you plant potatoes in greenhouses or greenhouses, you can get an early harvest without any tricks, but our article is intended for those gardeners who do not have such an opportunity.

What do you need to grow potatoes?

In order to get a good potato crop, you need to properly prepare it and plant it in warm soil in a sunny place. In cold soil with a temperature below 12 degrees, it will not germinate, but will lie like in a pantry until the soil warms up.

We described in detail earlier how to prepare tubers for germination.

Then it needs to be germinated and can be planted.

Planting potatoes in April

Surely there are many ways to grow potatoes early, we present to your attention the three most popular and proven ones.

Landing under the ridges

This is not the best way, it allows you to start planting work no earlier than the soil warms up to 8 degrees. But even a week stolen from unkind weather matters. The ridges need to be cut in the fall, because if you do this in the spring, you will have to wait until they warm up in the sun. The top layer of soil on autumn hills warms up quickly after the snow melts.

In the recess between the two ridges we lay a layer of organic material – rotted manure is best, but if it is not there, compost or rotted straw will come off. We lay the potatoes on the organic layer with the sprouted eyes up, slightly pressing them into the surface of the substrate, and sprinkle with a thin, about 2-3 cm layer of humus. We take the upper, well-heated layer of earth from the surface of the soil and sprinkle our planting with a layer of 5-8 cm.

The remaining soil from the ridges will be used as the soil warms up for hilling potatoes. Hilling will have to be done more than with conventional cultivation as the potatoes germinate. At the end of the season, the entire ridge will move to the potatoes.

The northern weather is insidious, frosts are possible already after the emergence of shoots. Cover the planting with lutrastil or agrofibre, if you have enough of them, if not, put the tops in the groove and sprinkle with earth from the ridges. When the frosts pass, and the sun comes out, she herself will stretch up.

Planting potatoes under covering material

As a covering material for early planting of potatoes, a spunboard or agorofibre can act. They easily protect plants at minus 5 degrees, while denser and more expensive varieties can keep temperatures even lower. They are lightweight and comfortable to use, let heat and moisture through, and besides, they have been used for many years. Their only drawback is the cost – after all, in order to cover a potato field, a lot of material is needed.

Before planting potatoes, it would be good to warm the soil. To do this, the soil is covered with cardboard, old newspapers, and even better with black plastic wrap or black agrofibre. If we plant the tubers in preheated soil, we will save a few more days.

Growing potatoes under straw

The beauty of this method is that it does not require loosening the soil. You can make shallow grooves or loosen the soil slightly with a rake, but many gardeners do not even do this.

The potatoes are laid out on the heated soil in even rows and sprinkled a little with the heated soil, rotted humus or compost. A layer of hay or last year’s straw 20-30 cm thick is laid on top. The advantages of such planting potatoes are obvious:

• If necessary, to collect young potatoes, you do not need to dig out the entire bush, on which there will be many more small, unsuitable tubers for food. It is enough to stick your hand into the straw and pick up as many tubers as you need, moreover, the desired size.
• Harvesting is very easy – you just need to turn the straw with a pitchfork.
• It is much easier for sprouts to germinate through straw than through soil.
• The absence of weeds, therefore, we get rid of weeds.
• Straw holds moisture well, watering will be significantly reduced.
• Straw, continuing to slowly rot, will provide potatoes not only with heat, but also with useful substances.

There were also some disadvantages here, but they are not as significant as the advantages:

• In windy areas, the straw will have to be fixed somehow so that the wind does not scatter it.
• Straw needs to be taken somewhere, it may have to be bought, and these are additional material costs.
• An area filled with straw will look ugly. I think you can survive it.

Conclusion

As you can see, you can plant potatoes in April even in the Northwest. There are several ways that are very different from each other. Choose the one that suits you and perhaps after trying it once, you will no longer want to plant potatoes in the “old-fashioned” way. Watch a short video about the early planting of tubers under dry grass:

And for lovers of lunar calendars, we note that there are no favorable days for planting potatoes in April 2019. Wait May.