Successfully Grow Vegetables In Containers

How To Successfully Grow Vgetables In Containers, specifically potatoes – yield over a hundred pounds, prepare the container, prep your spuds, soil depth, and water requirements.  So I’m getting a little creative here not because I don’t have the garden space, but out of necessity.  Yesterdays post was on gophers and moles eating my crops and how to Successfully and Humanely Rid Gophers from your garden.  The Castor oil mix works.  However I want to plant my potatoes today while I’m getting the gophers out of my garden.  So today is all about “How To Successfully Grow Potatoes In Containers And Yielding Over a Hundred Pounds” and answering some questions on the subject.  So let’s dive right in …

How many potatoes can I plant in a container?
The general rule of thumb is to plant one seed potato for each 3 gallons of container. For example: plant  3 or 4 seed potatoes for a #10 container, 5 seed potatoes for a #15 container, and so on. Place the seed potatoes evenly in the container.

How deep should a container be for potatoes?
15 inches deep will suffice, but the deeper the pot the better as you’ll get more potatoes in deep, soft dirt.

How many potatoes does one plant yield?
Generally you will harvest approximately 5 to 10 potatoes per plant.  So make sure they are properly spaced and have ample root room.

How to Grow Potatoes in a Container?
A few days before planting, prep your spuds by cutting the seed potatoes into 2-inch chunks that have several eyes on them (let them cure for a few days to prevent rot).  After all danger of frost has passed make a free draining soil mixture and mix in a handful of time-release fertilizer. Fill the container 12-15″ deep with previously moistened medium. Plant each spud with eyes 5 to 7 inches apart and cover them with a few inches of soil.  Once the potato growth reaches a half a foot,  cover potato greens as they grow.  This can be done with soil, straw, even well chopped leaves. Do this until you reach the top of the container.  Keep the potatoes well watered but not soggy. Once the greens die off in the fall – you’re ready to harvest.

See the 8 Tips For Growing Potatoes article on soil preparation, location, how much water, etc.

GROWING POTATOES IN A METAL / GALVANIZED TROUGH OR STOCK TANK

Last year I successfully grew potatoes in laundry baskets – this year I am going big.  So this is the stock tank container I had laying around (don’t ask where we got it from as I have no clue).  We brought it into the garden area and as you can see from the first picture, the stock tank had a few rusted holes along the bottom, which will make for very good drainage (which I scrubbed and cleaned before planting).  The tank was accidently placed ontop of a small section of daffodils and as you can see – one has grown through the bottom of the tank.  I will work around this cute little flower.

Prepare your tank or trough – drill drainage holes in the bottom of the feeding trough roughly 6 inches apart.  Cut some screen to size and place it at the bottom of the trough to protect the drainage holes from getting clogged.   You can put the tank on bricks, cinder blocks or 4×4’s to help with drainage.  But as you can see I didn’t do this and just have it placed ontop of some newly rototilled soil.

Fill with soil – I filled the container with a mix of fresh soil and “black gold” from my decomposed compost pile, and mixed it to distribute the nutrients.

Plant potato spuds – here I planted  the cut and cured spuds directly ontop of the soil in the trough. I have a few varieties so I planted them together in terms of maturity, size and height.  I din’t want the taller ones to shade the smaller ones as they began to grow.  Then I covered the entire tank with about 6″ of fresh soil and some straw ontop of that, and will continue to do so as they grow.

Water scedule –  keep the soil consistently moist in the trough while plants are young and then water according to plant needs. Keep in mind – plants in stock tanks dry out more quickly than those in the ground, so it will be best to set up a drip irrigation system or a soaker hose.  This I will do next.

And there you have it – how I’m growng potatoes in a container – an old galvanized stock tank/trough this year.  I’ll keep you posted throughout the growing season with results.  Let me hear from you and your creative ways to grow potatoes.  Until then – CIAO 🙂