Double Your Potato Yields With This Dirt Cheap Homemade Grow Bag Method

okay my friends i got a very good one for you today today i'm going to show you the ultimate method for growing potatoes it can literally double or triple the yield you're getting now and this method can be used anywhere it doesn't depend on the native soil okay it's different than the last video that was the instant weed free garden it's a similar concept but it's very very cheap very easy to do anyone can do it anywhere so check it out i'm going to show you the technique first and then i will we'll come back and i'll discuss some of the specifics the pros and cons and towards the end of the video i'll give you the biggest tip of all that is going to just blow up your yield okay okay step one it's very useful to lay down the weed fabric and i will put a link in the description to this exact heavy duty kind that i use this will solve a lot of worries and issues for us the next step is to create some kind of a barrier to contain the leaf mold or the soil that we're going to use now here you can see i just busted apart a pallet i made little slits in the landscaping fabric pounded in shard stakes that i carved out of the same palette and that is what's keeping the wood in there i didn't even nail the wood in it's all just kind of containing it all right it's really makeshift but it works perfectly fine it doesn't have to get more complicated than this you see i use this same technique to build makeshift beds in other places and this is from last year even and there's no nails involved it's just stakes that are carved from the same palette okay make do with what you got it's free it's cheap it's easy it works okay next step after we have the landscaping fabric down and the barrier created we want to fill the area with three to four or five inches of leaf mold this is very important okay if you don't have leaf mold you can use soil you can even just use straight up leaves or grass clippings or whatever you have but the idea is that we have to conserve the leaf mold is going to hold a tremendous amount of water in the dry parts of the season so the roots are going to grow down through the holes in the bottom of this bag and into the leaf mold and that's going to be the real saving grace when it gets hot and dry now the next step is one of the most important of all once everything is ready you put the bag in its final resting place once you put a plant in the bag it never gets moved this is crucial because if you move the bag you will fracture all the roots and it will be a disaster so put the bag where it's never going to move or or get jostled now you want to fill the bag a third of the way with compost preferably just fresh beautiful dark rich compost it doesn't matter if it's completely finished just mostly finished also here i use a mixture of old used potting soil also some native soil also various other things but compost is the best now fill the bag a third of the way full with the compost and then begin to roll the top down when you do this you want to get it as tight as possible because we're trying to form it'll actually form like a sturdy ring around the thing okay so really really get it tight now listen up there must be drainage holes so i like to take a long piece of rebar and pierce it through the soil and until i feel it puncture the bag you have to make sure that you puncture the bag with drainage holes i put 10 of them in each of these bags and this is so important because not only to make the substrate drain but also because the potato tubers are going to grow in the back but the roots are going to actually go down through these holes into the leaf mold and that's going to make them very drought tolerant okay now at this point you could grow pretty much anything in these bags once the sides are all rolled down tight and the holes are poked into it and it's full of compost pretty much anything will grow in there okay it's just it works best if it's something that will grow big enough to shade out the bags because in the blazing sun the black plastic can get very hot but for example the potatoes are going to grow up and spill over during the summer you'll see to the point where you won't even be able to see the bags also sweet potatoes would work good in this but you can plant anything in this swiss chard or beets or whatever you want but for this we're doing potatoes so let us go into the basement and get them okay here we are going to go into the basement and get the leftover potatoes from last year obviously they have really started to sprout they are ready to go in the ground now so we are going to pick up four of the dark red new orleans this is a determinate variety and it is an early producer and they're very delicious now we're going to put four potatoes to each bag and this is the pattern that we're going to use but here's the tip now here is the secret of the masters okay and it is this potatoes the indeterminate variety which is the vast majority of them okay you hear a lot about determinate and indeterminate but the vast majority are determinant potatoes okay which means that when you plant the potato it is going to set roots and tubers to the side and maybe slightly up just slightly it will never set tubers below the initial seed potato okay so it's going to set it all on one level you plant the potato and it's going to plant more tubers on the same level pretty much all right as opposed to the few varieties of indeterminate potatoes that they will if they're buried in enough soil they will continue to produce a little bit of tubers up the vines but but these are ones that are really really long season 130 days and stuff like that so for the most part the only one really common is like german butterball okay those are indeterminate and those can be grown in the exact same way the only difference being you would add more soil and roll the bag up as the season went along and then add more soil and roll the bag up but pretty much just don't worry about it anything you get kennebec's yukon gold all that stuff is all determinate it's all going to grow on the same level keep that in mind okay so here's the tip plant the potatoes in the bag at two different levels let me show you okay so we'll be planting four potatoes in each bag now we're gonna plant them on two different levels so that we can get a bag full of potatoes to do that you'll see on the bags that there is they come to two points where the bag joins together there's two points on the back now at those two points dig almost all the way to the bottom of the bag so that you're only two or three inches above the bottom plastic of the bag put two potatoes at that level and once those are buried just a few inches above the bottom of the bag now go to the opposing side and plant the other two potatoes but only plant these maybe two inches deep see they're going to be on a whole different level than the other ones that are six to eight inches below these two and these ones are going to barely be buried at all just a little bit because they're only a couple inches deep now here is the secret another secret go to your compost pile that has a tarp over it because that's how you keep it and get the black gold the good stuff nice rich composted organic matter and this is the key because potatoes are heavy feeders meaning they require a lot of nutrients so compost is going to give you a perfect balance of vitamins minerals and nutrients as well as micro organisms so get you a five gallon bucket of the good stuff with worms in it and all that it doesn't matter if it's not all that finished like this stuff it's not completely finished but that's fine it's going to break down and feed the potatoes all season long now you will very gingerly add the compost add the whole five gallon bucket to the bag and you can roll the sides up or down as needed but you will gently put it all in there and that is all you will have to do in about two weeks you'll see sprouts sprout up through the soil don't worry that they're buried five six eight inches deep the potatoes know exactly what to do they will use the stored energy in the tuber to power up through all of this no problem then it's pretty simple from there out you just water the plant make sure it gets a good watering at least once a week but with the drainage holes it won't matter you can't really over water so it's all good just make sure that they stay moist now the real magic of this method is as you will see here i put three small red new orleans in here last year and because the potato is forced to consume only what is in the bag it supercharges it it doesn't spread out roots into the surrounding clay or or soil that is lackluster and nutrients it only consumes the supercharged stuff so from these three small potatoes last year i got this 10 15 might have been even 20 pounds of potatoes back and that is an incredible return on investment my friends so this is the method that you want to be doing grow your own calories potatoes are super nourishing full of vitamins minerals the good calories fiber so long as you leave the skins on all that stuff all right so if you have any questions you can put them in the comments please like the video if you gain something from it share it with your friends we need to all be doing this you

Channel: Garden Like a Viking

Views: 1,126,489

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Id: zL7QyzLlVTc

Length: 10min 32sec (632 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 04 2022