- Hello and a very warm welcome back to the garden.
Now, can you really have a garden without potatoes?
I think that every single garden has to be growing them
but as time progresses,
I've been moving away from growing them in raised beds
towards growing them in containers.
And I'm gonna explore this
a lot more in detail in this video
to show you how to best maximize your growing space
by careful planning and a bit of strategy
behind your potato growing.
If you go to a supermarket or greengrocers,
potatoes are one of the cheapest vegetables you can buy
in terms of weight.
You can get a lot of spud for a little sterling.
If your number one goal in your garden is to save money
then on a square foot basis,
leafy greens, herbs and edible flowers
are gonna provide so much more value,
they're much higher value crops than growing potatoes.
You'll find that focusing on those,
they're gonna end up saving you a lot more money.
In a garden you have a hierarchy of growing space quality
so undercover growing space takes top priority.
Second are these beds here
that are gently sloping, south facing, lots of sun.
And then I feel that containers
are then a lower priority growing space.
And I like to match the value of the crops
to what I'm growing in.
The really high value tomatoes, for example,
are in the poly tunnel.
The lesser value, for example, garlic
is growing here in the beds,
and then the lower value potatoes in containers
'cause, don't get me wrong, I love potatoes.
Growing your own they taste absolutely amazing,
better than what you could buy in a supermarket.
They'll always have a place
but I'm trying to think carefully
about how I can really get the most from this garden.
The second reason why I like to grow potatoes in containers
is because main crops take up a lot of growing real estate.
You could plant them in March
and then harvest them say in September or October
and that's a lot of growing space
that's dedicated to one crop.
There's no space for succession planting.
So, what I do is I focus on Sarpo Miras,
they're absolutely fantastic and they're blight resistant.
Blight, potato blight is one of the toughest disease
I've ever had to come up against
and it's the same for most of you watching as well.
So, I usually just focus on first earlies and second earlies
which come out a lot quicker and before blight likes to hit.
But this Sarpo Mira combined with growing in containers,
and I'll be sharing that strategy
a bit later on in this video,
has probably been one of the biggest game changers
to how I approach growing potatoes.
I just mentioned how growing main crop potatoes
can take up a lot of the real estate of your growing space.
So if you think about it, if you plant them in April
and harvest them in September or October
you're actually, in my climate anyway,
you're using the entirety of the frost free months
to grow one crop which is, excuse the pun,
as cheap as chips.
So, you gotta think carefully
about prioritizing what to put in your space.
Leading on from that
with the idea of also first and second earlies,
which you do harvest a lot faster.
But one of their other downsides
is that they're actually quite a disruptive crop
because of their nature of growing
and when you're harvesting them and you're fondling about
and trying to find all of those spuds
that are hiding in the ground,
it can damage your soil health.
It can also damage plants nearby
so if you're wanting to companion plant
it's actually really hard to do.
Instead what you want to do
is just grow a block of potatoes
and then as soon as you harvest them,
you then transplant something in their place.
So just think carefully
about the actual knock-on effect that it can have
not only to the plants near them in a raised bed
but also if you weren't growing, say, two beds of potatoes,
which is what I used to do.
I used to dedicate two beds,
usually the bigger beds in this garden
every year to potatoes and I think in that exact same space
I could potentially be growing 20 or 30 other crops.
That thought of thinking about all of the other crops
and numbers of different crops that I could be growing
where potatoes would grow in raised beds
aligns perfectly with a personal mission
that I've got this year
of growing for flavor and not productivity.
And it's very much more geared towards experimenting,
trying out new things.
And I think on a personal level,
growing potatoes in raised beds
is actually gonna hold me back from that.
I do love the enjoy of harvesting potatoes.
Like especially if you've got them in a container,
tipping them out or unearthing them from the ground,
but I feel I'd get more joy if I grew 20 or 30 things
that I've never grown before, different varieties
that all accumulates in the same space.
So in this kind of weird way
that I'm approaching gardening right now,
I'm thinking about how much joy can I get from that space?
I think I'd get a lot more joy
out of a very diverse raised beds,
growing lots of different things
and all of those different harvests and flavors and sights,
versus just growing them for potatoes.
So, last growing season
I had a proper attempt at growing potatoes in containers
and it's definitely converted to me
and it's confirmed my desire
to move away from growing them in raised beds.
And I'm now gonna list some of the benefits that I learned
through trying this out last year
that has helped make that decision.
So the first benefit is that containers are a great way
to fill small nooks and crannies,
or put them up against something
to make the most of that space.
Maybe there's not enough space for a raised bed.
Well, what's smaller than a raised bed? Containers.
So, you can turn those unproductive areas
suddenly into a productive area for growing more food.
The other great benefit is that potatoes are movable.
And if you have a frost that threatens
and you don't have really anything to protect them with
you can always put all your containers
next to your shed or your garage
and then if cold weather is coming,
put them away for the night.
The other benefit that I found
through investing in containers for potatoes
is that you can use these to grow other things as well.
So perhaps after harvesting
you could then plant in your brassicas for winter.
And it's also a great asset to have
'cause these will last you about 10, 15 years,
potentially more.
And if you are perhaps renting,
these who are a lot more landlord-friendly
than say a raised bed.
And if you're interested in buying these
I brought these using a link that I got
from Tony O'Neills channel "Simplify Gardening",
which will be down below in the description.
The biggest benefit that I discovered
from growing potatoes in containers
was actually something that I discovered this winter
and around the back of the Polycrub
I had a load of containers that were filled with potatoes
that I completely forgot about.
And it is January time and I decided to tip them out
and there were potatoes perfectly stored.
They were Sarpo Miras
so they weren't affected by the blight.
And it suddenly dawned on me that instead of worrying
about harvesting a whole bed of potatoes
and then storing them, which can sometimes be a bit risky
'cause if one of those stored potatoes spoils
it's like a domino effect for the whole stock
and can destroy your whole stock.
It's much easier keeping them in their pots and containers
and just coming along and tipping them out
as and when needed.
That's a strategy that I'm gonna be taking moving forward.
Based on that surprise that I got
from seeing how well they stored in the ground
and the ease of that,
I've decided that this year I'm gonna grow
20 containers of Sarpo Miras
for the goal of storing them just in their containers
until needed.
So between October and February,
I can harvest one of these potatoes
or one of these containers a week.
And if we get a very attainable
one and a half kilos of spuds in each container,
then that's six large portions of potatoes every week
which should be a really big contribution
towards self-sufficiency during winter.
The way that I'm gonna plant these buckets
is firstly gonna use Sarpo Miras.
And what I've done
is I've got a 50/50 mix here of Rocket Gro
which I'm an ambassador for this year,
and I'm gonna put it through its paces to see how it does.
Really exciting, amazing texture.
I've also done it with a mix of just some old compost
to help bulk it out.
And then I'm going to fill this container
with about a third of compost.
Unfortunately my microphone cut out, so what I did
is on the bottom third placed two seed potatoes
and then I covered this up with compost
actually all the way to the top,
leaving around a 1 inch gap or 2 1/2 centimeter gap
from the top of the container.
The only real downside that I came across
when growing potatoes in containers is watering them.
But when I was watching one of Tony's videos
he used a type of a straw to put over the top
to help act as a mulch and retain water.
I don't have access to that
but I do have access to lots of grass clippings
so what I'm doing
is I'm gonna put a layer of grass clippings over the top
just to help retain the water
to save some time watering a lot of containers.
And that's the exact process I'm gonna repeat
for the other 19 buckets.
(gentle music)
I've just gone ahead
and I've planted all of these containers
and you can see that I've put the grass clippings on top
as a mulch.
I'm really excited to see how these go.
Now, when you do come to say harvesting these potatoes
and then you've got the compost leftover
you can either use that again to plant
or you can watch this video
where you use it as an ingredient,
one of eight free ingredients
to bulk up your compost production.