All right, I'm just going to say it: Potatoes do not belong in your raised beds.

I know, I know, I'm always going on about how raised beds are the perfect place to grow your annual vegetables. And that's true for pretty much everything but potatoes.

My family and I have been growing potatoes for over 10 years, and we've tried just about every single method. I have a couple favorites that I'll tell you at the end of this post. But first, I'll give you my 3 reasons why I don't recommend planting potatoes in your raised beds.

3 Reasons Not to Grow Potatoes in Raised-Bed Gardens

Reason #1

The first reason comes down to space. Potato plants simply take up too much room. Every single potato plant you grow in your garden needs at least 1 to 1.5 square feet of space to grow to maturity. A lot of that growth will happen underground, just below the soil surface, making it really difficult to grow other plants around your potatoes.

Raised beds take a lot of work and money to set up, between the raised bed material, the soil, and the irrigation. That's why I consider them the most expensive real estate in your entire landscape. The plants you grow in these raised beds should be the ones that give you the highest return on your investment in those raised beds. That includes plants like tomatoes, cucumbers, beans, peppers, eggplants, kale, and cabbages. Basically, things that you can harvest from again and again.

Those are the plants to focus on growing in your raised bed for the ROI. Potatoes are definitely worth growing at home, but they're not worth sacrificing the space that you want to give to your more expensive produce.

Reason #2

The second reason I don't recommend growing potatoes in your raised beds is because of their specific soil requirements.

Nutrient Needs

Potatoes are what we call heavy feeders, meaning they take a lot of nutrients out of the garden soil. The rest of the plants that are growing in your raised beds need those nutrients, too.

Potatoes have very specific nutrient needs that extend far beyond the basic NPK requirements that all of the other plants you grow in your raised beds need. Here are the nutrients required to grow just one potato:

• NITROGEN to get the leaves and stems growing to ensure the plant has energy to produce a high yield of potatoes later
• PHOSPHORUS to develop strong roots and tubers
• POTASSIUM to improve tuber size and quality, convert sugar into potato starch, and prevent disease
• CALCIUM to help the plant resist fungal and bacterial attack
• MAGNESIUM to transport sugars from the leaves to the tubers
• SULFUR to prevent lesions from forming on the skins
• Plus IRON, CHLOROPHYLL, MANGANESE, BORON, ZINC, COPPER, & MOLYBDENUM

Soil Acidity

Potatoes also thrive in slightly acidic soil. They want to have a soil pH that ranges between 4.8 to 5.5. In comparison, most of your other veggies—carrots, tomatoes, and broccoli included—want a pH between 5.5 and 7.5.

Between the nutrients and the acidity, it just makes sense to grow your potatoes in a different location than the rest of your leaves, roots, and fruiting plants in your vegetable garden.

Reason #3

Lastly, growing potatoes in a raised bed makes a big mess. If you've seen the way that I plant my vegetable garden, you know that I pack in the plants. I plant intensively with a wide variety of plants in each and every raised bed for pest and disease control, production, and beauty.

As potatoes grow and produce more leaves, you want to hill around each plant. Best practice is to add a bit of compost, soil, or mulch around the base of the plants for every 4 to 6 inches of leaf growth. Hilling encourages more tubers to form along the stems. So if you're hilling around your potatoes in a raised bed, then you're creating an uneven soil level for any plants you've companion planted with your potatoes.

But the real mess comes when it's time to harvest. You have to dig around each and every potato plant to find all your little spuds. If you've harvested potatoes before, you know that they have a tendency to roam. For every underground stem, you can have tubers extending 6, 12, maybe even 18 inches from the base of the plant.

Of course, if you're just growing potatoes—and nothing else—in a raised bed, this isn't a problem. But if you've interplanted potatoes with anything else, those other plants are going to suffer a major disturbance as you dig around to find your full harvest.

Where to Grow Potatoes Instead

Now that you know where I don't recommend planting potatoes, let me tell you two great alternatives.

Alternative #1

My favorite place to grow potatoes is actually directly in the ground, outside of my raised-bed kitchen garden area. I plant potatoes right in the surrounding pollinator garden space, alongside shrubs, wildflowers, and milkweed. As potatoes grow up, their leafy green vegetation blends in really well with all the flowers. And then I have space to plant annual flowers for the rest of the season once I dig the tubers up.

Learn more about growing potatoes in the ground.

Alternative #2

Large containers are another great option for growing potatoes. I grow some varieties in large wine barrels I got from a local hardware store. I simply drilled a few drainage holes in the bottom, filled the barrels with compost-rich soil mix, and planted the potatoes about 6 inches down. The container makes it really convenient to hill the plants as they grow. Each plant has plenty of room to grow, and I end up with tons of potatoes without having to disrupt any other plants in my garden space.

Learn more about growing potatoes in containers.

Time to Plant Some Potatoes!

Okay, if you're still not convinced, we do have a guide to growing potatoes in raised beds from one of our wonderful garden coaches, who grows all her potatoes in her raised beds. (We can agree to disagree on this one!)

No matter where you decide to grow them, you should definitely plant some potatoes. They're one of the most rewarding crops to grow in the garden. Come harvest time, you'll be able to make so many delicious meals with your organically grown spuds. I look forward to my potato haul every year.

Click on the Pinterest Icon below to save this post for later!

Sources

Haifa Group, "Crop Guide: Potato Nutritional Requirements"

University of Idaho, "Crop Requirements and Nutrient Sources"