In this part of the country, gardeners’ conventional wisdom says to plant potatoes on St. Patrick’s Day. I’ve always been intrigued by this advice, which makes the Irish holiday the appointed date for planting the vegetable we most often associate with the Irish. Because of where it falls on the calendar, potato planting also is the opening salvo of the growing season in many gardens.

I have been unable to find anything specific about where this originated and how it came to indoctrinate so many vegetable gardeners. Gardeners are, after all, a fairly independent lot who tend to improvise according to the vagaries of the weather. While gardeners also may dabble in superstition and devise rules of thumb, these usually are based on personal trial and error rather than someone else’s prescription for how gardening should be done.

I have never read this St. Patrick’s Day advice in a book, but I have heard it plenty of times in conversation. Over time, many gardeners have come to accept it as gospel, which makes it akin to folklore. Like many others, I have dutifully planted my potatoes on March 17, as if some other day just wouldn’t do.

Logically, this link between St. Patrick’s Day and potato planting would gain traction only in climates similar to ours, where, coincidentally, the weather for starting potatoes is often prime in mid-March. Potatoes need to start their season when the weather is still cool and wind it down in June, before the full bore of summer heat settles in. In climates with less extreme temperatures, the window for planting potatoes would be much wider.

Potatoes are easy to grow and good soil offers a high yield for the amount of space the potatoes take up in the garden. I also like having the potato vines in bloom in the garden in late spring. The color of the flowers depends on the variety, but my favorite are the grayish purple blooms that often show up on red potatoes.

Planting a row or two of potatoes also gives you the option of letting them go until harvest in the early summer or eating them as new potatoes. In the case of red and gold potatoes, the young potatoes fresh out of the ground are tender, smooth and flavorful.

The down side of growing potatoes is that the planting and harvest can be more labor-intensive than with other crops, particularly if you hill your potatoes. Then, when the vines die, the crop must be dug up, which can be a strain. Given how cheap potatoes are in the supermarket, I find it difficult to muster the enthusiasm to grow them every year — but I am always drawn back to planting them again, eventually.

Avoid using grocery store potatoes to plant your crop, unless you buy organic. Many supermarket potatoes have been treated with chemicals to retard sprouting and to prolong shelf life under fluorescent light.

Greenhouses and farm stores sell seed potatoes, which are many-eyed potatoes that have not been treated with such chemicals but may have been dusted to help them resist disease. Or they may just be untreated potatoes. Unfortunately, the packaging, if there is any, may not supply that information.

Cut the potatoes into pieces that have two or three eyes and spread the pieces cut side up in a well-ventilated and well-lit place for a day to harden them before planting. I also have planted whole potatoes with good result, particularly if the potatoes are small. Plant them 6 inches apart in a furrow that is 4 to 6 inches deep. Be generous with the water, particularly in the early going.

And don’t tell anyone, but if you don’t get the potatoes in the ground on March 17, you can probably plant them up until the second week of April and still have a decent crop.