Using coffee grounds on your potatoes work absolutely fine. Adding coffee grounds to your potato plants helps in giving them a considerable growth.
You can add the grounds in form of a coffee compost blend and you can as well mix coffee compost with leafmold.
Using coffee grounds for your potatoes gives an excellent result with healthy growth and development of your plants and also leaving the stems and leaves in great condition.
Potatoes can be difficult to grow in the garden and can also be no doubt, quite challenging to grow in a container.
There are certain steps required to minimize the risks and maximize the yield of your potato plants which will be explained below:
Growing potatoes tips with coffee grounds
1) Soil Preparation to add coffee grounds
Potatoes are lovers of acidic soil and will ultimately thrive well in soil having low pH. It is also necessary that your soil is deep and loose. All these factors end up giving you big, firm and flavourful potatoes.
To plant your potatoes, you need to prepare the soil ahead of planting and at planting time, taking all these factors into consideration.
A soil having a high pH depicting alkalinity can be corrected and coffee grounds can be used.
This is because coffee grounds have high acidic content which can hell in adjusting the pH of the soil thus, lowering it.
To grow your potatoes organically, you can prepare the soil by either using cover crops or organic fertilizers.
Read also: Do Beans Like Coffee Grounds?
2) Coffee grounds for Preparing Seed Potatoes
To obtain good yield, use high-quality seed potatoes. Afterwards, place them in a cool, light, and frost free area having the most ‘eyes’ exposed. These eyes will sprout over the course of the following 2 – 4 weeks.
For each piece to have at least one large sprout, cut the larger seed potatoes.
A potato without sprouted ‘eyes’ will most likely, fail to develop a plant and thus, should be discarded alongside any potato showing signs of rot.
The cut seed potatoes should be allowed to rest, probably for a couple of days for them to skin over before planting.
Read also: 5 Best Potatoes Storage Containers
3) Planting the Potatoes
The best methods for planting potatoes are the deep holes or trenches and they should be 10″ – 12″ deep. Also, when filling in the soil, ensure it only loosely cover the seed potato.
For higher yield per plant or for larger potatoes, you can allow a minimum of 12″ – 14″ between plants in the trench or between holes.
Tighter spacing will only end up producing smaller tubers. A lot of phosphorus is needed by potatoes when rooting, thus, you can have a quarter cup of bone meal sprinkled in each planting hole.
This bone meal has a high content of phosphorus. In each space, place one piece of seed potato and ensure that all the shoots face upwards.
Read also: Do Onions Like Coffee Grounds?
4) Hilling or Moulding Up the Potatoes
When the potato shoots are 10″ – 12″ tall, they should be fertilized and covered with a hill of soil close to the top of the shoot. Having grown another 8″ – 10″, fertilize and hill them again.
However, never hill potatoes which have started to bloom as this could sever the shoots and also resulting into the death of the new potatoes.
Read also: Do Petunias Like Coffee Grounds?
Conclusion
I hope you find this article helpful. I would like to hear from you. So, let me know if you have any questions about using coffee grounds in the potatoes garden.
Also, check out whether coffee grounds is right for snake plant.
