How To Grow Potatoes the Easy Way: Potato Containers for Couch Potatoes

Learn an easy way to grow your favorite variety of potatoes in containers.

In early April, I was visiting our local garden center and I saw a container system designed specifically for potatoes.  It's essentially, a fabric bag with handles.  You fill the bag with 6 inches of soil and plant 3 or 4 seed potatoes in each bag.  Cover with soil and add additional soil as the plant grows.  By adding soil progressively, you create additional space for the plant to send out roots.  As a result, the plant produces more potatoes. 

Versus growing in traditional beds, the container systems offer the advantage of being space efficient.  They also make harvesting easier because the bags have flaps on the side that are secured with Velcro.  To harvest, you can just open a flap, stick your hand into the center of the bag and feel around for potatoes.  Alternatively, you can just spill out the contents of the bag and hunt around until you find the potatoes.  Either way, makes harvesting potatoes easy for both hard-working gardeners and couch potatoes alike.

The purchased containers are convenient, but there are less expensive alternatives if you are on a tight budget; people grow potatoes in plastic garbage bags, trash cans, and I've even heard of folks stacking old car tires to create potato beds. 

Growing Information

• Buy seed potatoes.  These are small potatoes grown specifically for planting.  They differ from potatoes you buy at the grocery store in that they have been inspected to insure they are not carrying any diseases that could effect future crops of potatoes.  They are also not treated, as are many supermarket potatoes, with chemicals to prevent sprouting. 
• Plant in the spring when the soil temperature is over 45 degrees Fahrenheit.  To get things moving quickly, put your seed potatoes in a sunny warm environment (70 degrees Fahrenheit) for 1-2 weeks, prior to planting.  You want them to sprout and send out shoots. 
  
• Plant using a mixture of garden soil and compost.  Fill the bag with six inches of this mixture and then put 3-4 seed potatoes on top.  Cover the seed potatoes with compost.
  
• Water every few days so that the soil stays moist.
• Add additional compost as the potato plant grows so that you fill up the bag over time.
• After the plant has flowered, it will die back and turn brown (generally about 90 days).  Potatoes are now ready to harvest. 

Potato Varieties:

I added potatoes to my garden this year as an impulse buy and so I'm growing pretty standard Russet and Yukon gold varieties.  However, there are many, more interesting, varieties you can grow.  Next year, I'll probably try a few varieties that are a bit more exotic like All Blue - an heirloom variety with dark blue skin and a lavender colored flesh, or Desiree, a red potato that's a favorite in Europe.

If you are interested in learning more about potato varieties, the University of Washington has a comprehensive list of potatoes with a description of each and generally a link to a picture.

By the way, you'll probably harvest about 3-5 pounds from each container... and that's no small potatoes.

Comments

[Anadrol]

That's great idea! And I won't even have to be afraid of vole!

[H. Mark Delman]

I hadnt thought about the avoidance of pests as another advantage of these containers, but youre right. Thanks for commenting.

[Dawn]

Mark,
Do potatoes have to be grown when it's cool, i.e. the spring? My husband the Swede, who comes from a country that has a fanatical relationship with the potato, says it would be too warm to start now. Do you think that's true, or is it just customary for people to plant them early? Swedes traditionally harvest their first potatoes for Midsommar, around June 22.

[H. Mark Delman]

Your hubby is right. Potatoes are a cool season crop. I planted mine right around April 1 which is our last frost date, but I could have planted them a few weeks earlier.
Potatoes take about 3 months to mature, so my guess is that it will be too hot in the Washington DC area to grow them at this point since you would be harvesting in early August.

[amy]

What about sweet potatoes, they are more of a warm season crop, right?

[H. Mark Delman]

Hi Amy:

You are right...Sweet potatoes are tropical. They love heat. However, they are very different genetically than Irish Potatoes. Dawns husband is a Swede and I know he really wants the Irish variety. Thats why I didnt mention sweet potatoes as an alternative.

[Julianne Idleman]

Hi Mark,

I've got some All Blue seed potatoes saved from the last time the Dirt to Dinner crew planted them out. Let me know if you want to try to slip some in yet this year. (I pretty much grew them year round last year.) I'll be at CG this weekend.

-Juli

[Mark Delman]

Hi Retro Jordans, what is the URL for your website about rice?

[Eduardo]

Can you grow potatos in Tampa, Fl....it is very hot here year round

[Joel]

Two types of taters.
1 is a bottom tuber only.
The 2nd is a bottom & side of the buried stem type.
Anyone know the name.

[H. Mark Delman]

Hi Joel:

Please post a link to where we can see a photo. Theres no photo in the original posting.

-PlanterTomato