How do you grow your potatoes?

[TheBrit]

Most people grow potatoes in the usual way. Straight lines of mounds planted with potato plants and harvested in the usual way.
Some years ago I was told about growing potatoes in pot.
You used a large deep pot with the usual drainage and positioned to get adequate sunlight to the plant(s).
These were planted in the bottom of the pot with enough compost to start them off. As they grew compost was continuously added to the pot until the plant reached the top and then grown until the flowers started to die, maybe dead-heading once to try to squeeze a bit extra growth from them.

In this way the yield per plant was greatly increased. Ideal for someone with limited space or a plant budget.

 

[happyflowerlady]

I think this is a great idea. I have not tried it, but have also been reading about doing this. One of the ways that I read was to use a large bag, like a garbage bag, and fold it down for the initial planting. Then as the potato plants grow, you unfold more of the bag around the plants, and add dirt, straw and compost, a bit at a time, so that the potatoes keep growing.
Then, when they are ready to harvest, you can just cut the bag open, and pull the potatoes out of the bag.

 

[sissy]

I have found a great way to get more potato's all my shredded mail goes in the soil with sand and it really allows for more potato's to grow ,I plant yellow black and white and red ones and plant 6 of each and i get plenty of them from this soil mixture .Plus it makes it easy to pull the potato's out without disturbing the plant

 

[Francy]

The shredded mail idea is great. I always throw away bags and bags of shredded mail and I'm always thinking I wish I could do something with this. I would be curious to see if potatoes will grow in a pot. I may have to try this. I don't see why they wouldn't but I'm not 100% sure.

 

[headfullofbees]

I dig my trenches deep, about 40cm (16"), leaving the soil in mounds alongside, and line them with seaweed.
I then partially backfill with a light covering of soil, then add some fish, blood and bone, and some woodash.
I cover this until there's about 10cm (4in) of soil on top of the potatoes, still leaving mounds of soil alongside the trenches.
I water them in with actively aerated compost tea, which I brew especially for this.
I cover the whole lot with a big sheet of black polythene mulch. This allows me to get my spuds in about a fortnight early.
When the spuds do peep through, I begin earthing up, using a little more fish blood and bone, and watering with seaweed extract, and, at some point, at least one more batch of compost tea.
I lift the black sheet in April.
I continue earthing up as required until the frosts finish here (mid May) and let the first earlies grow to maturity.
The 2nd earlies get one more earthing up at the start of June, and I continue to earth up and feed maincrop potatoes until September, which helps with late blight..
When the potatoes start to form in May, I use Nemaslug beneficial slug-killing nematodes every six weeks, to protect them from underground slugs which are a huge menace here.

 

[Bandit26]

Currently using the grow bags for mine