A Gardeners Forum Forums General Discussion The Food Garden Forum Vegetable Gardening Potatos in Containers How much is too much???

I'm planning on growing my red potatos in containers this year. I'll likely use 5 gallon buckets. How many seed potatos should I put in each bucket? I was thinking 2 or three but I read that some people only put one seed per bucket. I don't want to crowd them but I also want to get the most I can out of my small garden space. Hmmmmm. . .

Thoughts?

One seed per bucket is all you can use..you need room for the potatoes to grow

OK sounds good. Guess I'll be buying more buckets to accomidate the extra seed potatos I bought Another excuse to go to the garden department and browse!!!

A lot of restaurants give away 5 gallon buckets for free...it's what they get their oil and supplies in.

If I just want to try to grow one potato in a bucket do I need to buy a special potato or can I use a potato from the grocery store?

as long as it has viable "eyes" I do not see why you could not, Cindy.

There you go...I'll be a potato farmer this summer!

I got my potatos planted today! I used 4 large storage tubs instead of buckets as I had originally planned. Since the tubs are much bigger I was able to put two seed potatos in each container. The potatos joined their onion sisters and garlic brothers in the garden. Its one big happy root family!!!

I used a store bought/accidentally-sprouted red potato last year and it worked out just fine for me. Im using seed potatos this time only because I found them at a local store for next to nothing.

Good grief...I just read that (after looking out the window at many inches of snow) and then looked at your location. Wish I was in Florida right now.

A lot of store bought potatoes are sprayed with a substance to stop them from sprouting eyes...and we wonder why we are so full of toxins?

I didn't know that. But I did notice much less sprouting in my taters.

I did not know that either--(about teh spraying) but I did know that one must have sprouted eyes in order for the potatoes to work.

I plan on washing my potatoes much more completely from now on---Better late than never---

Yup, it's called 'sprout-retardant'.

yuck...I didn't know that, either.
Yeah, I think I need to start growing my own veges this summer.

ya know Cindy when teh girls were home I grew enough potatoes so that I did not buy 1 potato until well into january. I need to get back to that.
I do like the idea of the buckets I ahve always wanted to try teh plant it in a shallow amt. of dirt thing & then when it came up and was not a little guy, you would cover it up & wait for it to break thru the top of teh dirt again---& one is to keep that up until teh container is full of diort and teh plant is again out in the open & growing well.----
That method is how one supposed to bear more potatoes in a small---

I would really like to try it to see h ow it works---perhaps this year I shall.

I grew all my vegetables when I lived at my farm...canned enough every summer to last forever.
I grew my potatoes above ground in straw and a little topsoil...hard too explain but I cut fencing material into 8' lengths, each length I formed into a circle and secured...added straw and a little topsoil and a few potato eyes. Instead of hilling up as you would normally do all I did was add straw and just a very little bit of soil. I could stick my hands through the fence into the straw and get to the potatoes as I needed them. We lived by the "Mother Earth Magazine" and that's where I found this growing method...more than 20 years ago.

Some of you may remember my post last year (my very first attempt at growing ANYTHING) about how I grew sweet potatos in a stack of old tires (hilling them) not knowing that hilling was of no use to sweet taters
Well as I was cleaning up that side of the yard today and I rolled away the last tire. Low and behold I saw the smallest bit of a sweet potato peaking through the dirt!!! I investigated further and was thrilled to find 8 nice sized tubers!!! What a great surprise!
The hilling did not one thing for the potato vine but potatos grew anyway at the bottom of the tire stack where the vines had originally been planted! Makes me want to try sweet taters again. I liked the vine too. Very pretty leaves and man did it grow and grow!

I have gotten sweet potatoes in pots growing the fancy leaved ones.

I was not planning on planting tatters this year, but I really should now that I read about all the toxins, and we go through ALOT of tatters (about 50-60lbs) a month.
My problem is that I don't know how to keep them from going bad other then canning them, and I don't want to can them. I don't really have a dark dry place to put them either. Any suggestions?

I'm new to this forum and have no idea how to start a new post, but I planted some potatoes which had sprouted into a pot on my back they started to grom properly and then stopped and are going a yellowy colour, I told someone and they said I had put too many in, whne I went to dig some out today there are potatoes attached....do I just leave them to carry on growing or are they ok to eat? I havnt had any flowers on the plants...Help!!