Want to grow your own potatoes but don't have the room?
No worries. Potatoes are one of the easiest crops to
grow in a large container. And I'll show you how.
So you'll need 3 main things.
A large container, soil and potatoes.
Now for the container,
Anything larger than a 5 gallon container will work
The number of potatoes you can grow depends on the
of the container
I"m using a 20 gallon container and
that will fit about 5 to 6 potato plants. Now this particular
container as I mentioned is a 20 gallon, it's a non-
woven fabric and this is called a Grow Tub
I got it from GardensAlive.com
But the main thing you're going to want to look for is a container
with good drainage.
the next key component is soil.
So what I've got here is a mixture of
compost, peat and potting soil.
You're going to want to look for something that is loose,
and loamy, provides good drainage and is high in organic
matter.
Avoid heavy or compact soils as this won't provide
the drainage that potatoes need and they will be prone
to rotting
Potatoes are also heavy feeders,
so a little dose of compost or something that's rich in organic matter
is really going to help.
Now as you can see here, I've got our container about 4 inches full of
growing media. You' ll need some
seed potatoes. Now I see this question a lot
"Can I use potatoes from the grocery store to grow my own potatoes"
The answer is "yes"
But I would advise you to get organic potatoes
because a lot of times conventional potatoes are treated with sprout inhibitor
which will actually prevent
these eyes from sprouting out.
Good for storage and selling in the grocery, bad for
growing your own potatoes. So these are some seed potatoes that I picked up
from a local greenhouse, and you can already see on here they have a little bit of sprouting going on.
Now you can plant whole potatoes.
If you have potatoes that are this size or smaller, I would typically
just plant this whole. But for larger
potatoes, and to stretch your money a little farther,
you can actually cut these into sections so that each
section contains an eye. Or one or more
of these little growing points. So to do that
I'm just going to come along
with a knife
and cut, my knife's not super sharp
so it's not going smoothly but,
you get the idea.
You're just going to cut these into sections,
and you can see here, how each of these
sections has one or more
eyes, or little growing points on it.
Now typically for in-ground planting, I
would cure these pieces, which is basically just letting them
air dry for a couple days so that this side
gets a little dried out, I do that in-ground because
our ground is often very wet and cold, and curing them
helps prevent rotting. In these containers because
they're warmer and there's good drainage, I don't bother
with curing, you can plant them just like this. But you're going to put them
cut side down,
and, for a large 20 gallon container
like this would typically do 6 potatoes
or 6 pieces
just kind of evenly spaced in here. I actually
only have 5 right now, so that's what I'm going to go with.
And then you're going to want to provide a little food for your potatoes.
So the thing to keep in mind with root crops like potatoes
is they need less nitrogen
but more phosphorous and potassium.
So what I'm using here is a potato food from Gurney's
It's a 3-4-3 ratio
and it does have a higher potassium and phosphorous
content. And this is a naturally derived,
slow release fertilizer. So I'm going to apply
about a cup in here
and between the slow release fertilizer
and the compost, and all the good rich organic
matter that's in here, I shouldn't have to
feed this again throughout the season
You could always come back about the time that
the potatoes start to bloom and add another dose
of this fertilizer if your plants are looking a little peaked,
but typically I would not do that. So I'm just going to
come in here, like I said
about a cup. I just kinda eyeball it
And then I'm going to dump some more soil in
on top of these.
Now you can do this part a couple different ways.
Again, with in-ground potatoes typically you would hill them
as you grow, with the containers, I
like to add about another 3-4 inches
of soil in the container, let my potatoes sprout,
and then as they, as the plants are about this tall,
I'll fill in the rest with soil.
You can also actually just go ahead and fill this whole
thing now, it really won't hurt anything,
The other option is, you can fill it dirt
and then as they start to grow you can actually mulch this
with a lot of straw or leaf
mulch or some other kind of mulch that
will fill in the container and but allow the plants to easily
grow. That will also help to hold
in some moisture. But it's whatever
materials you have available and whatever's easiest for you.
to do. The main thing is that as these
grow you don't want to have tubers exposed to the
sunlight, you want to keep them covered. So typically
I would give this a nice big healthy drink
of water.
We actually got a lot of rain last night and this was sitting outside
so my planting media here
is already pretty saturated, so I'm just gonna
let this go, I will probably come back in a couple days to
water this. And with potatoes
you want to keep them evenly moist
but you don't want to over saturate them
because that can lead to rot and other icky-ness.
In the grow tubs, in these kinds of containers, they will
dry out a lot faster then they would in the ground.
So I will typically go in, about 2-3
inches deep and check that soil
if it feels dry that far down, I'll come in and
give them a good healthy drink. If not,
I'll let them go a couple days, and again using
common sense, if it's really hot & dry they're going to need more,
watered more frequently. If it's cool & wet
as it typically is through our springs
not going to need supplemental watering quite
as often. So that's it. The quickest and easiest way
to enjoy your own homegrown potatoes.
Give it a try and let me know what you think.
Thanks for watching and I'll see you next time.