recently I've been looking at all the videos a few folks have been viewing in
your droves such as the potato growing tips the potato growing hacks and the
more recent potato growing experiment that last video has been viewed over a
hundred thousand times in the last three weeks alone and if you haven't seen it
already I put a link in the cards above growing potatoes is fantastic it
fascinates a lot of us because you never know what jewels are lying beneath that
soil surface in today's episode I'm going to be showing you how I'm growing
large potatoes make sure you stay right to the end because not only are we going
to see the results I'm going to be giving you tips and hacks right away
through this video learn all the secrets I use when growing large potatoes in
containers and all that's coming up right after this
welcome to UK Here We Grow I'm Tony O'Neill on this channel we
deal with all things gardening poultry keeping and beekeeping if it's your
first time here consider hitting that subscribe button
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love grown potatoes that a fantastic crop to grow they so versatile and I'm a
big advocate of growing them in these thirty liter containers from the Oakland
gardens I put a link in the description below for those, but by growing in buckets
you get to control the environment the potato grows in you're not limited to
the condition of the soil in your garden in this episode I'm going to be giving
you one method that I use for growing large potatoes in containers right guys
before we go any further you wouldn't use this method to grow normal eating
potatoes although you can eat these potatoes but it is really designed to
grow a single potato as big as possible and I can hear you crying now why would
you want to grow just a single potato well if any of you have followed my
channel for any length of time you will know that I am looking to always push my
growing skills and with that in mind I am looking to grow the largest potato in
the world and this is the method that I'm using for that but it can be adapted
in order to just grow really large potatoes and lots of them I don't mind
telling you folks a miles away from it but for me is the journey not the
destination but today I'm going to take you through the exact growing method I'm
using and we are going to harvest these four containers as you can see we've got
two 50 litre and we've got two 110 liter containers you not the 30 liters that
I normally grow my potatoes in so the very first thing we need to do is chit
or sprout our potato we do this the same as we would for any other potato and
once we have the chit I remove that sprout from the tuber leaving just a
small cone of potato attached and this is planted in to some
compost with mycorrhizal fungi and left to grow on have you ever tried to grow
from a single sprout or chit just like this if you have put a yes down in the
comment section below let me know so I keep planting this
plant on and go from one size to another to another and eventually it will reach
this flower bucket size once we have it in here I will totally bare root the
plant and when we move it from this I'll bare root it again and we'll remove all
of those tubers that we no longer want and eventually it will get planted into
its final container now whether that's a 30 liter pot just like this one or it's
a hundred and ten liter pot like the big ones we're going to be harvesting today
feeding these plants I use a slow release fertilizer like blood fishing
bone and also mix in a granular potato fertilizer but this isn't the only feed
that these will get throughout the growing season our feed weekly with a
liquid seaweed fertilizer you can make your own or you can buy it in concentrated
form as I have here a water is required only using rainwater which is stored in
our rainwater collection system see the cards above for that video so there
they grow until all the foliage is died back and it's now time to harvest them
but before we do that I want to talk to you about the benefits of growing in
containers we have six benefits view benefit number one is that growing in
containers is so much easier there's no back-breaking work
you can plant these potatoes really really easy and when it comes to
harvesting them is just as simple you're not having to dig trenches you not
having the hoe up you just put the potatoes in and cover them over and
you're done tip 2 harvesting them is just the same you literally could just
tip over the pot and anybody can do this it doesn't matter whether or not you
struggle to bend over you can literally just tip the pot over and pick the
spuds out and you'll see just how easy that is know as we get a bit further on
benefit 3 there is much less damage from things like slugs
wire worm and even the gardener when he puts his fork through the potatoes you
don't get none of that when you're growing in containers. benefit 4 when
your harvesting your potatoes they're usually much much cleaner than when they
come out to the soil because the compost doesn't cling to the potato benefit 5
growing in containers means you can store them in the container all you have
to do is cut the haulmes off and literally just stack those containers in a cold
frost free place like a garage and then you can harvest them as and when you
want them you don't need to be harvesting them all in one go putting
them into sacks to be able to store them and the last benefit guys, benefit number
6 you can grow these early you can plant them as early as you like in a
polytunnel or greenhouse that gives you an added
advantage over anybody else that's growing in the soil outside because if
you grow in the soil outside the frost is gonna take the tops off and set those
potatoes back but by growing them in a tunnel in these containers you can move
them out after the last Frost's. now you know all the steps that I've taken to
get the potatoes to this stage now is the moment of truth
did we grow any large potatoes that's worth keeping for next years seed or better
still did we break all the odds and get a world record who knows but let's go
find out right guys so we're going to harvest the two 50 liter containers and
then the 110 liters and I've got a couple of friends here to help me today
and that's Liz Zorab and Mr. J from Byther Farm now you may have know these
guys from a collaboration that we recently done they have a homesteading
channel and it's absolutely fantastic if you haven't seen that collaboration
video there'll be a link in the description below and if you want to go
to their Channel and have a look I'll put a link up in the cards as well so
you really should get across there because Liz you do loads of stuff on
your channel don't you is all sorts of growing preserving and the poultry and
everything is a fantastic channel get across and have a look guys so what
we're going to do now we're going to get on with these we're going to cut off all
the haulmes that are left and then we're going to get them onto the soil here
we're gonna harvest these and we can have a look what's in them Mr. J can
give me a hand
okay so remember these are really wet at the moment if you remember we
added perlite to some of these buckets and in one of the last videos it didn't
do very well so I haven't got high hopes for this particular one or the other 50
liter but we'll have a look to see what we get
If you guys want to give mea hand and split that one across and I'll get something to
put them they are not huge though are they. oh hang there we go looking a bit bigger tell
you what we'll do is stick em on the ground by here for a moment no monsters
in here, just potatoes
well a couple of big potatoes guys but nothing to write home about so if we do
the same thing now on the other bucket guys we'll leave these potatoes in front
of the brackets for now and then we'll sort that out as we go and again this
one also has the perlite in and before guys I told you about why we added a
perlite and it was in a bid to try and lighten up the soil thinking that
the roots would do better in a soil that they could could get more free root
growth in and also the drainage would be better but it's just not happening every
bucket that's had perlite has been poor as far as I'm concerned okay
okay
no again you know they're decent size potatoes to eat but not what we are
looking for and that was it out of that one and don't forget guys ideally we only wanted
one tuber because we removed all the tubers from these because we were after
a giant potato we've got some good eating spuds but for the effort pretty
disappointed on these so far right these are the ones that I've got most hope in
and these potatoes were grown from last year's largest one that I grew and
we cut it in half and I'll put a link in the description below so that you guys
can see how I planted these big ones now these containers are 110 liters each
let's see there's just one seed potato planted in this guy's so that's looking
little better so we have lots of potatoes nothing really gigantic but
they are large so yeah again still disappointed in what it's produced
yeah and the variety for this guy's is Kondor
and it just happens to be the world record holder at the moment hence the
reason we are growing it so I think what we need to do now is empty the last one
and everything is going to prey on that
right back on top of this one thing
these are big containers guys falling look
well I gotta say, for the, look at that. that's not good is it
no there's some decent size spuds here but no record breaker
okay spread these out, spread this out like this and chuck all these big ones on here
and see what we have
alright that will do for now.
alright guys as you can see we've got a lot of smaller ones in the front here and we've
got some fairly fairly large potatoes I gotta say I'm a little disappointed
because initially I wanted just a single potato to come out of there and look what
we had you know we've had probably six or seven potatoes out of a bucket but
they will make good eating potatoes and next year we will need to try again. now I
have a few theories I get potatoes of this size over 30 liter containers these
hundred and ten liters and 50 litres I think of doing us an injustice and the
reason being is I think that part of the reason why the potatoes do so well is
that the roots are confined to a small growing area and the feed has
to be taken up by those roots in such a big container and one seed potato in
this as you saw there was a lot of soil there was no root in it and I think
that's doing us a bit of injustice so next year we're getting back to just a 30
litre container and we're gonna plant the one seed in that, and you'll see that from
some of my other videos but although these spuds are still large spuds so
we've been growing large potatoes in containers as we suggested we didn't get
our world-record potato there's always next year and as I said early on in the
video guys it's more than journey than the destination so that's it in this video
guys I really hope that it's been of interest to you if you haven't already
don't forget to click that subscribe button and the bell icon to be notified
each time we put out content just like this
anyway Liz, Mr J thanks so much for helping me with the potatoes because
they wouldn't have lifted those buckets on my own I'm Tony O'Neill and this is UK
Here We Grow and remember folks You Reap What You Sow. we'll see you in the next
one bye-bye