How much room for potatoes?

[wsmoak]

How much room do I need for 12 Beauregard sweet potato plants? For 2 lbs of Yukon Gold potatoes?

My garden beds are 4' x 8', will potatoes work in that kind of space or do they need more room to spread out?

I'm somewhat familiar with planting potatoes and then covering them up as they grow so they'll make more along the stem. Is that still recommended? Does that work with both sweet potatoes and regular ones? How deep should I plan for them to get?

 

[bid]

Sweet potatos you don't hill up. A 4'x8' bed I would say will hold 12 plants easily. 12" to 18" deep beds would be ideal. You can't really plant them right up next to the edges of whatever outlines your beds...wood, stone, etc. They run a long way but you can always prune the tips to curb their enthusiasm a bit. I usually plant potatos, sweet and regular, about 12 to 16 inches apart. I don't measure, just guestimate.

 

[lesa]

You do still hill up the regular potatoes. I used hay/straw as one of my layers last year, with good result... I dug down in my row, and left the dirt from the hole on the edges- then when it was time to add soil, I could just kind of bring the piles forward...
I got 12 beauregards too-did you order from the Potato Lady? Since my climate is a little cool for sweet potatoes, I am going to try mine in a barrel inside the green house... we'll see!

 

[Ariel301]

If you want to save space, you can also grow them in containers. I've seen people do it in 5 gallon buckets. This year I am trying a method where they grow in trash bags...I'm using empty plastic feed sacks. I put some drainage holes in the bottom, put a little soil in the bottom of the bag, enough to plant the seed potatoes in, and roll down the top of the bag. As the plant grows, you "hill" it by adding more soil/straw and unrolling the top of the bag as you go. It seems efficient, plus there's no digging involved with harvest.

 

[the1honeycomb]

If I plant sweet potatoes in a feed sack, should I give it more soil, and not worry about mounding.
I would likt to try it in the basement by a window, how much light do they need?:coolsun

 

[epeloquin]

I have seen people plant potatoes in a composted straw bale. Has anyone ever has success with that? I planted this year in my compost heap and did pretty well for my first time with potatoes. I am loking forward to doing it again this year.

 

[wsmoak]

For the record, the 2lbs of Yukon Gold fit nicely in a 4x8 bed, and produced 10 lbs of potatoes.

Considering what I paid for the seed potatoes (from Gurney's, probably not the cheapest source,) and what it costs to buy a bag of potatoes, this was not an especially good deal. (But it was fun. )

The sweet potatoes went into two 4x8-ish areas, but I'm pretty sure they sent more than 12 slips. The cats killed a bunch of them, but I still got a few respectably sized sweet potatoes, plus a bunch more small ones.

-Wendy

 

[epeloquin]

To me it is like raising chickens. My eggs cost more than I could buy them for in the supermarkey but my eggs taste 100x better and I know where they are coming from and that the chickens are treated well.

Maybe some stuff in our gardens could be purchased cheaper but I sure like providing my own food and it just tastes better!

 

[StupidBird]

Is it worth buying organic (so not sprayed with sprouting inhibitors) potatoes and risking them not being certified disease-free? Or saving my own year to year?

Where I live, there are many nasties in the soil. Lots of blights and fungus and bugs. I've been ok with the seed potatoes at the feed store, but it's always just the choice of white or red. Kennebec is the white. (zone 7b Georgia)

 

[jaj121159]

Last past year I planted a 15'x30' area with potatoes. I put them in trenches and it worked very well.