Our
Mailbox: Growing in Containers.
Q. I
have never grown potatoes and would like to try. I found your site and
it is wonderful! I would like to try Yukon gold and plan to plant in a
garbage can due to very limited space. How much Yukon gold should I
worder for one can? I live in zone 6, when is the best time to plant?
JT
Delmar MD
A. For
years folks
have been growing in innovative containers like old whiskey barrels or
your
idea, garbage cans.
New space
age
materials like the fabric in the
Smart
Bags
that we sell have
helped
propel container gardening to a much higher level of popularity and
success.
To insure that you've got adequate
fertility use a
good organic
fertilizer such as our Organic potato fertilizer. Mix into your soil
mix.
For a standard
35-gallon garbage can, four seed potato pieces is about the right
amount.
In that way
a one pound bag of
seed potatoes
will yield 8-10 seed pieces or enough for two garbage cans or two Smart
Bags.
Place 8 inches of soil in the bottom of the container and space out the
seed
and cover with 2" additional soil.
Once
the
plants
are 6 inches high start to add soil mix taking care to cover as few
leaves as
possible.
When you
are finished have 15-18
inches of soil in the container to cover the developing tubers.
Right now is a good time to plant in
Maryland.
Here’s a
good
informative article on
growing potatoes in containers written
by
AP garden
writer Dean Fosdick.
Here are some helpful Rules of Thumb:
* One pound of our Seed Potato Plants 10 feet of row or 10 'hills'.
* One pound of our Organic Potato Fertilizer feeds 10-12 feet of row or
10-12 'hills'.
* 15 Gallon Smart Bags are big enough for 4 plants.
* 25 Gallon Smart Bags are big enough for 5 plants.
*Use 1/10 lb of our fertilizer per plant.
An example of what to do with this
info: If you use
a 25
gallon smart bag plan to plant five seed pieces in it and mix 1/2 lb
fertilizer (5 x 0.10lb) into the soil mix.
Here's a link to a fun
3
1/2 minute YouTube video by our
friend Kerry Michaels
that simply and quickly shows you how to plant
potatoes in
containers. Jim.
