The potato will grow upon almost nay soil, with good management and a favorable season; but a loose, moist and cool soil in most suitable.
The availability of water throughout the growing season plays a very important role – increasing quality of tubers, helping avoid certain potato diseases and some tube defects, improving and increasing yield etc.
Well drained swamps sometimes produce the potato with great luxuriance of growth.
The best soil for potato is a rich loam, neither too wet nor too dry. A calcareous soil yields good potatoes, and generally sure crops.
It succeeds perfectly on reclaimed peat; and as both lime and potash are among the most appropriate elements of its food, well drained shallow peat, resting on calcareous gravel or loamy earth, in situations not too elevated, is easily rendered capable of producing large crops of the roots.
A potato may look perfect, but if the soil in which it was grown lacked sufficient minerals, then that potato is not as good a food for human use as a potato grown in a soil that has all the minerals.
Suitable soil for potato
