Blog Update!
For those of you not following me on Facebook, as of the Summer of 2019 I've moved to Central WA, to a tiny mountain town of less than 1,000 people.

I will be covering my exploits here in the Cascades, as I try to further reduce my impact on the environment. With the same attitude, just at a higher altitude!

Sunday, March 18, 2007

St. Patty's Potatoes

In honor of St. Patrick's day, my son and I planted potatoes. Granted these Yukon Gold taters are probably not native to Ireland, but they are potatoes, for Pete's sake.

I didn't feel like digging a huge trench and hilling them in my backyard, so I followed a little advice from a local gardener, Ciscoe Morris, and planted them in a container. Well, a short garbage can, really. I had heaps of fun drilling 1/2" holes in the bottom and lower sides of the can. We filled it with potting compost and perlite, planted the 12 potatoes and watered them in.

Now I just need to remember to hill the things up when they've grown a while. I have another set of potatoes to plant, but I need another container. I might try a half-whiskey barrel, but they're expensive (even though they look a lot more attractive).

8 comments:

Phelan said...

Let me know how well you do with the container. I go with the lazy bed method, and it has worked wonderfully.

Alexandra said...

Thank you so much for your helpful advice with my soap making adventure.

I'm a natural shade gardener, and an accidental veggie grower. I get veggies growing out of my free throw compost pile. Last year I was raking some leaves into the beds, and noticed potatoes rolling under my rake!

I plan to grow some for eating this year....not just compost growings for for the critters. :)

Crunchy Chicken said...

phelan - lazy bed method? That's my kind of gardening!

alexandra - you've got quite a compost pile going there if you're harvesting potatoes :)

April said...

Oooooh, I might need to try this container method. What is the yeild supposed to be?

April said...

never mind I just read the article. I'm going to try this! How fun!

Christy said...

I plan on doing potatoes in containers this year too. I ordered the cool blue ones and are still waiting for them to get here. I may need to call the company and find out what the deal is.

Crunchy Chicken said...

Yikes! That reminds me, I need to plant my cool blue ones. I put them in my gardening bench outside and promptly forgot about the poor little guys!

Alison Peters said...

Thanks for the lead on this method. I'm a beginner but I think I can manage it.