Growing potatoes in containers

This is a cross post from my blog over on Mother Earth News.

I've been growing potatoes in bins in our backyard for five years now. I started off using large, plastic storage containers that I drilled holes in for drainage and filled with a few inches of compost. As the potato plants grew, I "hilled" them with more soil.

Unfortunately, I have been less than attentive over the years and generally left the potato plants to get a little too tall before hilling them, which just meant that I probably wasn't getting the optimum yield. Last year, I didn't even really bother with getting potato "seeds" from the nursery and just let what was leftover in the bins grow. Needless to say, we hardly got anything from that experiment.

One thing I did notice, however, due to the paltry amount of potatoes, was that the bin got really soggy. The drainage holes I made just weren't doing their job and the potatoes that did grow were squishy and waterlogged.

Using grow bags
Instead of growing the potatoes in the containers again this year (one completely had degraded due to years of weather and sunlight), I decided to try growing potatoes in grow bags. The bags I ended up getting are felt-like and have a porous fabric that allows excess water to drain and the roots to breathe. Quite a difference from their last environment.

Hilling with straw and soil
One additional thing I'm doing differently this year is hilling the potatoes with layers of straw and soil. In previous years I hilled with just soil and it was always a pain digging through all that dirt to get to the goods. Over the years I had read that you can use straw. I didn't fully believe that just straw would work so I decided to use a combination layering technique of straw and soil.

So far, the potatoes are growing like crazy, but they grew like crazy in the old bins as well. I won't know if there's going to be any improvement until I harvest them, but I'm keeping my hopes up.

Do you grow potatoes? If so, do you grow them in bins?

Come check out my chits!

Melinda, over at One Green Generation was kind enough to explain the chitting potato process the other day. I bought two types of potato seeds this year, Yukon Gold and All Blue. They are organic and from a farm called Irish Eyes, just over in Eastern Washington. So, I consider them to be both local and organic.

I was hoping to plant them this weekend (as per traditional St. Patty's Day potato action), but it's been so darn cold and freezing that I think I'm going to wait a week or two, not just to give them a better chance of not freezing to death, but also to give me a better chance of not freezing to death while planting them.

This will be the third year I've grown potatoes. Okay, actually last year, I didn't plant any new potatoes, I just left what was in there from the previous year and they still grew a few. But, this year, I'm going to do it right again and plant and hill them in my plastique bins and hope for a bumper crop. The first year we had more potatoes than we could eat. But, the take home lesson with potatoes is that they are dirt easy to grow.

How about you? Have you grown taters before and will you do so this year?

Grow your own spuds

I've posted about growing taters before, but I wanted to bring your attention to an article in Mother Earth News about growing your own potatoes. It goes into different details than I did. Please check it out if you have any sense in you:

How and When to Plant Potatoes

Potatoes are the easiest damn things to grow and I bet you won't be able to eat all of them before they start sprouting and trying to climb out of your basement all by themselves.

If you want to read more about growing potatoes in containers, check out my previous posts.

I struck gold!

Yukon Gold! I had completely ignored my potato plantings this year up until today. The last time I checked on the Yukons I couldn't really find any. But then again I didn't dig all the way to the bottom of the containers.

This afternoon I figured I should at the very least go dig through the French Fingerling bin before it got too cold out. I assumed that there weren't any in that container as well and had written the whole potato project off as an abject failure.

Well, boy was I wrong. I dug up about seven pounds of fingerlings. Then I moved onto the Yukon Golds and dug up eight pounds of them. Hoo boy! Are we gonna have us some potatoes.

Now, this doesn't seem like a whole lot of potatoes, but it is for us. Particularly since I haven't a clue how to store the little buggers.

So, can any of you guys help me figure out how to store them? I have a room downstairs that stays fairly cold, but not cold enough and not humid enough. I don't have a root cellar. My other option is to keep them outside but I don't think it's humid enough either.

It is my understanding that potatoes should be stored at a temperature of 40 to 45°F and a relative humidity of 90 percent. I could try to make space in the fridge. If I put them in the fridge I'm afraid the ethylene off-gassing from the apples will cause them to sprout.

I just wished I had dug these up before Thanksgiving. Now that's local!

So, please. Help me save my potatoes!

Potatoes gone wild!

I know y'all are just dying to get an update on my spuds.

Well, I just may have underestimated the size of container I should have used for my potato project. But, it was what I had on hand. I really have been behind in hilling the Yukons so I finally did it this weekend. I filled the can up pretty much all the way to the brim, so I'll probably have to trellis the little fella for the remainder.

My French Fingerlings (on the right) are bringing up the rear (they were planted two weeks apart) and I suspect they will be in the same state soon.

I just can't get over the amazing vegetative growth on these guys. Oh well, maybe that means lot of potatoes come harvest time!

Potatoes part deux

Well, my Yukon Golds are already sprouting up. I'll have to keep an eye on them taters.

I decided to go ahead and plant the French Fingerlings in another plastic container (hey, they were on sale!). So, now we have both side by side. They aren't the most attractive garden containers, but as long as they get the job done, I don't care!

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).