This is exactly why you want to plant after danger of frost. Potatoes use their stored energy (starch) to put up fast, early growth. Your goal as a potato gardener should be to produce the strongest, healthiest TOPS by the time the plant flowers and starts tuber growth, because your tuber (potato) production is directly related to how healthy/large your tops are.Gary350 wrote:Potatoes are not hurt by frost so plant potatoes now and don't worry about it. Frost will kill the tops but not the potato plants under the soil. Tops will grow back over and over every time froze kills them. As long as you don't have a hard freeze that lasts for several days potatoes will be fine. Keep your plants out of the mud they do not like to be water logged.
If you plant too early and frost kills your potato's first attempt at producing tops, it has to dig deeper into it's stored starches to produce another set of tops. This weakens the plant overall, and produces smaller tops by the time flowering comes along. Smaller tops = fewer, smaller potatoes in the ground.
If you plant your potatoes after danger of frost and the plant has strong, uninterrupted growth from day one, you will have strong, large, vibrant tops that can produce large, abundant potatoes underground.
Here's a pic of my potato patch one year. This patch produced over 100lbs of potatoes. The seed potatoes were planted well after danger of frost.