Planting potatoes

On a cold and drizzly day in spring, it’s nice to know that you’ve already got some crops in the ground. Potatoes can be planted during the spring, before the last frost date in your area. One problem with potatoes is that they can take up a lot of room in your garden. The traditional way to plant them is to place the seed potatoes in a trench 4-6 inches deep, wait for the plants to grow 6-8 inches tall, and then hill more soil around the stems. The problem is that you have to pile up the soil from your trench until you are ready to hill.

There are some other options, which involve growing potatoes in containers. We’re trying a couple of these in the Community Growing plot this year. The first method is a grow bag. This is a fabric bag specifically made for container growing. We filled the bag with 4-6 inches of soil mixed with compost, placed the seed potatoes into the soil mix , and covered them with another 4-6 inches of soil mix. 

Once our second shipment of seed potatoes arrive, we’ll try two or three other techniques we’ve read about: a rigid container, an old plastic bag that compost or mulch came in, and a chicken wire tower. We’ll show you the results as the season goes on, and compare harvests.

-Suzanne