You're listening to the Beginners Garden podcast. I'm Jill McShehehehe with Journey Withjil.net,

and my goal is to give beginning gardeners the tools they need to grow a rewarding, productive garden. Welcome to episode 10 of the Beginners Garden podcast. Today we're talking all about growing potatoes.

Chances are, when we first begin to garden, we don't think about growing

potatoes. Most beginning gardeners start with tomatoes and peppers for good reason, but what they don't

realize is how easy and fun it is to grow potatoes. I've been growing this crop from day one,

and I've had a fair amount of mess-ups,

but once I learned from my failures and I adjusted, I realized that it really isn't that hard

to grow this staple crop. But why did I start growing potatoes from the get-go? Not only had I never

grown this crop personally, but I never saw

anyone grow it either. I have vague memories of my mom growing potatoes when I was very young,

but when we moved, she never grew them again to my knowledge. I got all of my instructions

from books and from the internet. For me, my reasoning for growing potatoes went back to my purpose

for starting a garden that first year. You may recall in episode one that my motivation

initially was to save money on groceries after becoming a stay-at-home mom. We ate potatoes a lot,

so it only made sense to try to grow them. It wasn't until later that I learned that non-organic potatoes carry a large amount of pesticide residue according to the environmental working group. So, let's talk potatoes.

Potatoes are different than other plants in that you don't plant a seed or a transplant. Instead, you plant the potato

itself. Have you ever left potatoes in your pantry for a little longer than you should have and you

notice these white buds growing out of them? They're kind of ugly looking. Those white buds are

actually the beginning of the stem. When you plant the potato in the ground,

these buds grow from the eyes of the potatoes upward seeking light. Once they've broken ground,

they begin growing leaves. Then the growth of the plant continues, as you would expect.

You may ask, can I just plant potatoes I got from the grocery store? The answer is

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