Back to Eden Gardening

[ninnymary]

@Beekissed I have a question on growing potatoes. I grow them in those black tree containers for the kids. I usually keep hilling with soil till the container is about 2/3rd full. This is a lot of soil and I was thinking about how you hill with leaves.

Can I fill the container about 1/4 or 1/3 with soil and then hill with leaves instead of soil? I don't know if that will give them enough room to grow.

Thanks
Mary

 

[Beekissed]

@Beekissed I have a question on growing potatoes. I grow them in those black tree containers for the kids. I usually keep hilling with soil till the container is about 2/3rd full. This is a lot of soil and I was thinking about how you hill with leaves.

Can I fill the container about 1/4 or 1/3 with soil and then hill with leaves instead of soil? I don't know if that will give them enough room to grow.

Thanks
Mary

You sure can! A lot of folks grow potatoes in straw and hay, with only soil at the bottom. Leaves work just as well, as I've discovered. Mary, I don't know how deep your container is, but likely the same as this guy's and he's got it down to a science....in one vid he uses compost to fill his containers and the other he's used manure and soil.

If you are trying to do container spuds, you'll want types of potatoes that will keep producing tubers along the vine as you add more material around them. But, I'm sure you already knew that!

Anyhoo, using containers and such, your leaves may dry out quicker than if used straight on a raised bed situation, so keep a mindful eye on the moisture levels there.

 

[ninnymary]

In both videos he uses a lot of soil which I'm trying to get away from. I have 15 gal. containers that look like his but I think mine are bigger. I will fill 1/3 with good soil and hill with straw. I didn't collect as many bags of leaves as I wanted to this year so I want to save them for my compost bin and coop.

Wow, he got about 20 potatoes from one container! I don't get nearly that many or that big.

Mary

 

[Beekissed]

In both videos he uses a lot of soil which I'm trying to get away from. I have 15 gal. containers that look like his but I think mine are bigger. I will fill 1/3 with good soil and hill with straw. I didn't collect as many bags of leaves as I wanted to this year so I want to save them for my compost bin and coop.

Wow, he got about 20 potatoes from one container! I don't get nearly that many or that big.

Mary

Yeah...this guy's growing for yield, so he has some good methods. He also uses spuds that produce well in containers as you build compost or soil around their vine stem...some potatoes will just grow tubers in that bottom layer of soil and not through the hill as you build it. I also like it that he sinks the bottom of his containers into the soil so they can draw moisture from the ground too.

He also knows enough to let the vines die completely and dry up...this is why you don't see a lot of little spuds in his crop. All the vids on YT where folks are showing spuds they've grown and how much they've gotten from them, almost all of them are pulling the tubers while the vines are still green...they think they're done when the vines start to die back or turn yellow/brown around the edges. Consequently, their spuds are small, fewer in number and have a lot of little tiny ones in the hill.

Been my experience, the taters are still producing and growing while those vines still have any green at all in them. We've always let the vines die back to brown, shriveled little things before harvesting. Prevents a lot of baby spuds one has to deal with and makes for bigger taters all 'round.

 

[ninnymary]

Thanks for that tip Bee. I'm one of those that harvests as soon as I see the vine wilt and start turning yellow. I guess I'll have to be more patient and wait till it completely dies back to brown. Can't wait to try this and see the difference.

Mary

 

[baymule]

Mary, you can always pick one plant to dig up......it is so hard to wait on those yummy potatoes!

 

[Beekissed]

Yep...you can rob any hill of taters during the season, just leave it growing but slip in under the plant and take out baby spuds whenever you wish. Won't hurt it a bit.

 

[ninnymary]

Yep...you can rob any hill of taters during the season, just leave it growing but slip in under the plant and take out baby spuds whenever you wish. Won't hurt it a bit.

I find it hard to do that in the containers. They are planted for the kids. They love to find as many as they can.

Mary

 

[Beekissed]

You could always let them do the robbing for you...that will teach them something new about growing spuds. They would also get to taste new baby taters...YUM.

 

[henless]

I didn't know that there was determinate & indeterminate potatoes like there is tomatoes, until I saw it on a video. I planted spuds in 5 gallon buckets a couple years ago. Planted them in soil in the bottom, then filled some with soil, some with straw as they grew. I'm assuming I had determinate potatoes since they never put out very much.