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.
