Advise needed on planting potatoes in plastic 55 gallon drums

[inchworm]

Ughh!! I've been carefully checking the weather forecasts to make sure the low temps are in the mid 30's for the foreseeable future. I saw a much more experienced gardener cutting up her potatoes to stick in the ground this weekend. So what did I do? I stuck mine in their newly built wire cage yesterday. It's 22 degrees this morning!!! Did I lose them all? I peeked in the baskets and there is no frost and the soil I tossed in there isn't frozen over. Do you think they're ok?

Inchworm

 

[smom1976]

Ok so after all the stuff about allowing the plant to get 7 inches tall to only letting it have 5 leaves at a time.. My little plants have lots of leaves but are only 3 inches tall.. so I added about 1/2 inch of soil. I will just keep doing this over and over..

today was the first day adding..

Quoting from the link above, the guy on idigmygarden:

"If it [underground stolon]goes beyond 2", and exposed to light, it begins to turn green and becomes permanent stem. Then the plant only produces a few stolons just above the root portion."

Oops, wonder if at 3" you're already late. He goes on to say only 3-4 leaves should ever be exposed:

"The second action of the sprout will be to make leaves. It needs leaves in order to take in chlorophyll to support the true stalk and exposed branches. If a person is able to constantly hill the plant so that only 3 or 4 leaves are ever exposed, the underground stem will continue to produce stolons. Do that over a 6-week period with tires and you could conceivably end up with 2' of tuber production. Miss several days early and allow the true stem to develop and you would probably find 2' of nothing but stem.

"One time, saw how that is done in some fields in Ireland. Potatoes were planted in normal rows but the hilling eventually was such that a man was working in a trench and shoveling dirt to waist level and higher. There were at least 2' of production with those plants but only a small cluster of leaves to show that something was growing there."

Hope I'm not overtalking this, I've never had it explained so precisely. And I'm so excited to succeed where I've previously failed. (Oh the rosy promise of spring...) Well, you'll get some potatoes, anyway. And maybe MORE next year.

I may be too late on a few of the plants.. but I put more on this morning .. and there were some plants that were not two inches tall.. so we shall all wait and see..

this is like a neat group experiment

 

[vfem]

Quick potato seed question


When cutting up a potato, I was told to cut it into pieces with a couple eyes left on each peice I want to plant. Then let them 'scab' but not in direct sunlight. How many days should I let is 'scab' before planting?

 

[bid]

Two or three days is usually good enough to scab over.

 

[Purple Strawberry]

If you were going to plant potatoes in a raised bed built for just potatoes how many would you say you could plant in three 4' L x 2' W x 12" D beds? Or what other size bed do you recommend?

 

[momofdrew]

If you were going to plant potatoes in a raised bed built for just potatoes how many would you say you could plant in three 4' L x 2' W x 12" D beds? Or what other size bed do you recommend?

unless you have space constraints I'd build one bed 4'x6' or4'x 8' I think it would be easier taking care of one bed than taking care of three....