How to Grow Potatoes in a Container

Growing potatoes in your garden can take up a lot of space, so learning how to grow potatoes in a container lets you plant on the vertical, not just the horizontal. This conserves space in your garden for all the other, prettier vegetables you want to grow. Meanwhile, you’ll have a steady potato supply once harvest time comes.

Potato Container Growing

To begin potato container growing, first select a container to hold your potatoes in. Any kind of large tub or container should work, such as a plastic bin for storage, or even a trash can. For my money, large plastic containers fit for storage clothes for the winter, or Christmas decorations, are a good choice.

The container needs to be a throwaway container, though, because of the next step.

Drill Holes in the Container

Drill holes in the sides and the bottom of the potato container. This allows for air to get to the soil, as well as drainage after you water the potatoes.

Acquire Seed Potatoes

Buy some seed potatoes to plant in your potato container. You can use potatoes you get at the grocery store, but these tend to be treated with chemicals to reduce potato sprouts that turn off customers, so they won’t grow as well as seed potatoes.

Cut Your Seed Potatoes Up

Before you plant, cut your seed potatoes into pieces. Remember to leave at least one eye per section, before these buds are the most important part of potato growth. These may look gross when storebought potatoes grow eyes in your cupboard, but these are the buds that create a new potato.

Prepare Gardening Soil – Plant Potatoes

How to Grow Potatoes in a Container

How to Grow Potatoes in a Container

Fill the potato container with roughly 4″ of soil. Place your potatoes in the soil, leaving a few inches between each. When you have your potatoes spaced, cover each with more soil.

Once you have the potatoes covered, water them.

Growing Time for Potatoes

After the last step, wait in the area of two weeks for the potato plants to grow. Weather might change the growth pattern of the potato.

Don’t Overwater

Potatoes grow best when you give them about an inch of water per week, so don’t overwater them.

Add Soil to the Potatoes

As your potato plants continue to grow, you want to gently add soil, so the leaves are just barely exposed to the air and light. Continue with this step, building up the soil, until you finally reach the top of the container. Continue to water the appropriate amount.

This should continue for somewhere around 100 days from the time you plant. When the green plants have completely died, the potatoes are ready to harvest. The dying process is the potato maturing and taking in the nutrients from the rest of the plant, so this is a good thing.

Tip the Potato Bin

Once your potatoes are ready to harvest, find an appropriate location in your garden and tip your potato container. Your ripe potatoes should spill out and make harvesting easy.

Store Your Potatoes up to 3 Months

Ripe potatoes last roughly 3 months in storage, before you need to eat them.

Growing Potatoes in Containers Next Year

Clean out your potato containers and reuse them next year. Once you know how to grow potatoes in a container, all you have to do is repeat the same steps from year to year. Each year might produce slightly different weather patterns, but these should be offset by your growing knowledge of how to take care of a potato crop.

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