Want to grow potatoes? Lacking the gumption to dig them up? Here's the answer: Boxes. Pick a spot in your yard where you'd like to improve the soil a bit and set out your boxes (at least the size of a 5 gallon bucket).
Fill the boxes with dirt and plant your potatoes, remember to water and weed. When it comes time, either break, tear, or dump the dirt from the boxes and pick up the 'taters!
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Seems I recall reading in ThriftyFun years ago that any kind of seed potato sets could be planted in a cardboard box filled with dirt, watered, and later in the season harvested by tearing the cardboard box away revealing all of the potatoes that had grown from the potato sets that you had planted in the box. Does anyone remember just how that was done?
I have the seed red potatoes, but am unsure of what to do. Being an elderly disabled women living in a mobile home park I do not have the ground to plant a garden so this box of home grown potatoes would definitely help me out in food costs. I can keep the potatoes in a burlap bag left to sit in my shed throughout the NC fall and winter months.
Thank you for all of your help!
It is very possible to do this. However, when you do this you'll need to put the box into something else. When cardboard gets wet it can start to fall apart.
I am looking for the easiest and simplest way to grow potatoes, like in buckets. When are they planted? Then what? I heard about, keep adding soil to the plants. I am not understanding this.
By Angie
I grow my potatoes in whatever container I can find. One year it was a large feed sack and a laundry basket. Both worked great. Though because the basket did not have tall sides on it, I had to insert cardboard pieces to increase the depth--that way I could keep adding soil as the plants grew. This way you get more potatoes, they will produce more because you have covered the growing stems and leaves with more soil. This year I'm using galvanized wash tubs, they're very big, but not tall, so again I will add my pieces of cardboard to build up the sides.
Check out these two blogs for everything you need to know about growing potatoes: 'A Garden For The House' and 'The Art of Doing Stuff'. Both of these blogs use great photos to explain the process and easy to understand. I think both have search boxes so you can find the potato growing posts on each blog.
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I prefer yellow potatoes over white. They have more flavor. Most have a unique buttery taste all their own.
This is a page about growing potatoes in tires. Tires make great potato planters. As the plants grow, you can easily keep adding tires to build a potato tower.
