Container grown potatoes?

[ORChick]

Does anyone do this? I have limited garden space, but would really like to grow potatoes. What sort of containers have you used, and what sort of yields have you got?

 

[smurfette79]

I seen a post on here about stacking tires, or garbage can potato growing.. We are going to try both methods this year.

 

[okiegirl1]

oh, modern pioneer has a wonderful way to grow taters. I did it last year and it worked like a charm.

hang on and I'll find the page.

 

[HEChicken]

I've grown them on my front porch the past couple of years in one of those containers that look like the bottom half of an old barrel. I'd say the yields have been pretty good considering the size of the container. However it gets pretty hot here in summer and its hard to keep up enough water to it. My potato plants have also been plagued by crops of caterpillars which has affected their yield. I love picking them off and giving them to the chickens - feels very rewarding, somehow....

 

[Wifezilla]

I grew sweet potatoes in an Little Tykes toy box and in old feed bags filled with dirt

 

[okiegirl1]

I can't find his, but this is the one I made with his directions.

http://www.sufficientself.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=4768

 

[Marianne]

I planted in straw one year, just a dab of dirt where I put the spud piece. You do have to add some compost tea or fertilize a couple times. Had great results, held the moisture really well.

This year I'm growing potatoes in wire cages, made with 2x4 welded wire, about 3' x 3' x 3' tall. Since I have plenty of space, I probably won't try anything smaller.

I saw pictures of some that were grown in a black trash bag. They just rolled the bag down low to start, unrolling as they added soil along the way. They got at least 20# of potatoes from that one bag. It's waaay too hot here for me to try it. They'd be cooked in no time.

 

[Neko-chan]

...

 

[Icu4dzs]

The tire trick works rather well. You start with one tire, fill it with soil and your seed potato. Then when it grows out of the soil, you add another tire and more soil. You can get this to grow rather big and get a lot of potatoes from it.
Good Luck.

 

[Wallybear]

When I was a kid we did the tire thing and it worked really well. We ended up with 4 tires stacked up by the end of the season. The next year we did the same with the exception that the first tire was dirt and each tire after that was straw with about 2" of dirt on top and we ended up with 5 tire stacks that year. The cool part of the straw is that you end up with really clean potatoes.