Growing potatoes in containers is easy, rewarding and most of all it will allow you to overcome the space problem since you can place the container anywhere you want.
It’s not that hard to grow a hundred pounds of potatoes, and once you read the steps, you’ll be surprised just how easy it is.
Buy seed potatoes
Whether you bought seed potatoes or supermarket potatoes, you should make sure to choose the healthiest potatoes to grow. Don’t use any potatoes that have signs of bruises or rots. Once you have chosen the potatoes to grow, put them in a dark cool environment until they develop eye buds. This may take a few days. When you see the buds, you can start planting your potatoes.
You should plant only the potatoes that have 2 to 3 eye buds. If a potato has more than 3 buds, you can cut the rest of the buds and leave only the 3 strong ones.
Cutting the potatoes
Use a clean, sharp knife to cut each tuber into several sections, being sure each section contains at least one “eye” and an inch of flesh. Let the cut potatoes rest for 24-48 hours before planting. This rest period enables the cut area to callous over and helps keep soil-borne diseases from rotting the tuber before it can grow.
Pre-sprouting
This is not an essential step either but it can boost the growth your potato seeds. You can keep your potatoes seeds in a cool and dimly lit environment for a couple weeks until the potato seeds develop strong sprouts.
Choosing a container
You need to use large containers for growing potatoes. Potatoes require depth rather than width. An ideal container should be at least 24 inches deep. Every two potato seeds should be grown in a 5-gallon container. If you want to grow 4 potato seeds per container, you should use a 10-gallon container.
Potatoes like warmth so any plastic container that can provide warmth is an excellent choice. Thus, you can use buckets, dustbins, sacks, and tires to grow potatoes. It is essential that any container you use should contain a lot of drainage holes.
Planting Seed Potatoes
As we mentioned earlier, potatoes require warmth. Thus, you shouldn’t start planting until the last frost has passed. It is crucial that the soil is warm enough to allow potato seeds to grow. The soil temperature should be above 40F (4 C) otherwise your plants will not grow.
You can use your garden soil if it is a good quality soil. If it is not, it is recommended that you buy some good quality soil. Fill 4 to 5 inches of the container with soil. Put the potato seeds on the top of the soil with the eye buds facing upward. Then, add another 5 inches layer of soil to cover the potato seeds.
Growth requirements of potatoes
The only negative when you grow potatoes in small spaces like this is the constant need to water. Potatoes need to be consistently moist, so a daily dousing during summer’s heat is an absolute must.
Fertilizing
Potatoes are not heavy feeders, thus applying a natural fertilizer is enough. Well-rotted manure and compost are sufficient to provide your potatoes with the nutrients they need to grow. However, for optimum growth, you could apply an organic liquid fertilizer. You shouldn’t fertilize your plants more than once a month.
Potatoes need a lot of potassium to grow. Therefore, you should avoid applying too much nitrogen fertilization to them. Nitrogen fertilizers will promote foliage growth rather than potato growth.
Harvesting
When the leaves are yellow and you start seeing blooms, you can start harvesting your potatoes. Don’t wait too long to harvest otherwise you will be harvesting dry potatoes.
This is how to grow potatoes in containers successfully. Follow these steps and you will enjoy a heavy yield of sweet delicious potatoes.
Enjoy growing potatoes!