Other common names
Irish potato, underground onion, white potato
Synonyms
Solanum tuberosum var. vulgare
Potatoes are hugely versatile and a staple ingredient of many meals in one form or another – boiled, mashed, chipped or baked. Potatoes are classified as being either earlies or maincrops. Early varieties are ready to harvest much sooner than maincrops and are what we call ‘new potatoes’. Maincrop varieties are in the ground a lot longer and produce a larger harvest and bigger potatoes. There is a huge variety of cultivars to choose from. The potato plant is a tuberous perennial grown as annual up to 60cm tall, with compound, green leaves and white, pink or purple, star-shaped flowers. The underground stems named stolons will form few to many tubers of different size and colour. The tuber bear small buds, from which all potaotes are vegetatively propagated
Position
Soil Types
Max Height
0.5-1 metres
Max Spread
0.1-0.5 metres