How Long To Grow Potatoes (Days To Maturity & 3 Key Ideas)

Whether you have already planted your potatoes or not, you might be wondering how long it will take for the tubers to grow to full size.

So, how long to grow potatoes? It takes from 60 to 160 days to grow potatoes (80 to 120 is more common). You can harvest new potatoes (which are smaller, with thinner skins) sooner than mature potatoes. Early season potatoes mature the fastest, while late season potatoes mature the slowest, and mid-season potatoes are somewhere in between.

Of course, if you have a short growing season, you might want to specifically choose early season potatoes. If you don’t have to worry as much about frost, you can go for mid-season or even late season potato varieties.

In this article, we’ll talk about how long it takes to grow potatoes. We’ll also answer some common questions about potato growth, maturity, and harvest.

Let’s get started.

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How Long To Grow Potatoes? (Days To Maturity)

It can take anywhere from 60 days to 160 days to grow potatoes! This is quite a wide range for days to maturity, and there are a couple of reasons for this:

Desired Harvest – if you opt for new potatoes (smaller tubers with thinner skins), you will be able to harvest sooner than mature potatoes (larger tubers with thicker skins).
Type of Potato – there are three basic types: early season, mid-season, and late season potatoes. As you can guess, the early season potatoes take less time to mature, while late season ones take the longest.

small potatoes new potatoes — You can harvest new potatoes (smaller tubers with thinner skins) sooner than mature ones at full size.

Keep in mind that the distinction between early season, mid-season, and late season potatoes often differs from one seed company to the next. Also, there is some variability in times to maturity: you might see “80 to 90 days” listed in a seed catalog (meaning an average of 85 days, plus or minus 5 days).

Here are some early season potato varieties:

Adirondack Blue
Algonquin
Belmonda
Dark Red Norland
Natascha
Purple Viking
Red Gold
Yukon Gold

Yukon Gold potatoes — Yukon Gold is one example of an early season potato variety.

Here are some mid-season potato varieties:

Caribou Russet
Gold Rush
Huckleberry Gold
Kennebec
Satina
Strawberry Paw

Finally, here are some late season potato varieties:

Elba
French Fingerling
Magic Molly
Pinto Gold
Princess Laratte
Russian Banana

Russian Banana Fingerling potatoes — Russian Banana potatoes are an example of late season potatoes.

For your reference, the table below compares various types of potatoes and their days to maturity, skin color, and flesh color.

Variety	Days (Avg)	Skin	Flesh
New (some varieties)	60	Varies	Varies
Chieftain	65	Red	White
Natascha	65	Yellow	Light Yellow
Prada	65	Tan	Light Yellow
Sangre	65	Red	White
Upstate Abundance	65	Tan	White
Algonquin	70	Tan to Brown	White
Red Gold	70	Red	Yellow
Belmonda	80	Yellow White	Yellow
Dark Red Norland	80	Red	White
Irish Cobbler	80	Tan	White
Purple Majesty	85	Dark Purple	Dark Purple
Adirondack Blue	87	Dark Purple	Dark Purple
Yukon Gold	87	Tan	Light Yellow
Carola	90	Yellow	Yellow
Kennebec	90	Tan	White
King Harry	90	Tan	White
Red LaSoda	90	Pink	White
Viking	90	Pink Red	White
French Fingerling	100	Rose	Yellow w Pink
Magic Molly	110	Dark Purple	Dark Purple
Purple Peruvian	110	Dark Purple	Light Purple
German Butterball	112	Yellow	Yellow
Canela Russet	115	Tan	Bright White
Gold Rush	115	Brown	White
Nicola	115	Yellow	Yellow
Russet Burbank	120	Tan	White
Butte	122	Tan	White

This table shows the time to maturity, skin color,
and flesh color for various types of potatoes.
Note that potatoes can mature faster or
slower than the average times listed.

How Do I Know When My Potatoes Are Ready To Harvest?

Mature potatoes will be ready to harvest 2 to 3 weeks after the foliage starts to die back (that is, when the vines and leaves start to turn yellow and fall over).

potato vines fallen over — Fully mature potatoes will be ready for harvest 2 to 3 weeks after the foliage starts to die back (turning yellow and falling over).

Mature potatoes take longer to grow than new potatoes, since they need more time to bulk up and develop thicker skins (waiting for thicker skins help to improve storage life).

You can always dig up a sample tuber from one plant to see how they are progressing – if they are small, you can wait a little longer to give them more time to grow.

If you want to harvest new potatoes (smaller tubers with thinner skins), a good rule is to harvest 2 to 3 weeks after the plant stops flowering.

white potato flower — You can harvest new potatoes 2 to 3 weeks after the plant stop flowering. You might need to dig to check on their progress if you don’t see any flowers.

If the plant doesn’t flower, you’ll have to play it by ear and dig up tubers occasionally to see how they are progressing (6 to 8 weeks after planting is a good time to think about doing some digging for new potatoes)

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A complete reference and an ultimate guide that teaches you everything you need to know about potato selection, planting, care, harvest, and storage.

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Are Potatoes Ready To Dig When They Flower?

Potatoes are not quite ready to dig when they flower. Even for new potatoes, you should still wait until 2 or 3 weeks after the plants flower before you dig up your tubers.

However, flowering is a good sign that your potato plant is healthy and getting closer to maturity. Sometimes, if the flowers are properly pollinated, they will produce fruit (small spheres that look like green cherry tomatoes).

potato fruit on vine — If the flowers are pollinated, they may produce potato fruit, which contain several seeds each.
Image courtesy of user: H. Zell via: Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Solanum_tuberosum_004.JPG

This fruit is toxic (don’t eat it!), but they contain potato seeds (usually, you grow potatoes by planting tubers, not with potato seeds).

What Happens If You Dig Up Potatoes Too Early?

If you dig up potatoes too early, they won’t be fully mature, and there will be some problems as a result:

The tubers will not be as large as they would have been at maturity.
The skins will not be as thick, meaning they won’t store as well.

If you dig up potatoes too early, you might still be able to salvage some new potatoes. These have thin skins and do not store well, so they would only be good for eating right away.

Luckily, new potatoes have such thin skin that you can cook them without peeling them first.

Can You Eat Potatoes Right After Harvest?

You can eat both new potatoes and mature potatoes right after harvest – as long as they are not green. Potatoes turn green after sunlight exposure, due to chlorophyll production.

Often, they also become poisonous after sunlight exposure, due to production of the toxin solanine. You can prevent green tubers by hilling your potato plants as they grow.

rows of potato plants — Hilling potato plants as they grow is a good way to prevent green tubers.

If you harvest new potatoes, you will probably want to eat them immediately, since they don’t store well for very long.

For mature potatoes, you can either eat them immediately or cure them to prepare for long-term storage.

To cure potatoes for storage, put them in a dark, humid area with good ventilation for 7 to 10 days. Curing potatoes gives them a chance to heal any cuts or bruises on the surface and to thicken their skins. This will give them a longer storage life.

yellow potatoes — Cure potatoes before storage to give them a chance to heal surface cuts and thicken their skins.

The ideal conditions for curing potatoes is at a temperature of 45 to 60 degrees Fahrenheit (7.2 to 15.6 degrees Celsius) and relative humidity of 85% to 95%.

If you don’t have an area with such high humidity, you can put the tubers in perforated plastic bags. This will increase humidity and still allow the potatoes to breathe.

Go through your cured potatoes and discard any that are soft or shriveled. If they rot in storage and the rot spreads to other tubers, you will lose much more than the potatoes you throw out now.

You can find a list of some potatoes that store w e l l f o r a long time here.