Bucket Potatoes

I’m working on potatoes this year and will be trying to grow them in buckets. Five gallon buckets to be exact. I grew potatoes in Minnesota but have not tried them here in Arizona. I don’t know why because they are so good when they are young. Young, new, or baby potatoes – they are so tasty! I will grow several potato varieties this year and see how it works out.

Planting time for seed potatoes is in February here in Arizona so I started this project February 6. I actually started in December by buying several varieties from a couple of farmers at the Farmers Market. I have a standard Red, standard Gold, French Red, Ruby Crescent, LaRatta Fingerlings, and Peruvian Purple. That’s a good selection for me to work with and see what works best here.

Step 1 – Sprout the potatoes

Not too tough. I set the potatoes in old egg cartons placed them out of the way and forgot about them. February came and YIKES what about the potatoes! OK, they sprouted and all is good. Several were larger so I cut them into smaller chunks with at least two sprouting eyes. After a few days, the cuts were scabbed over and ready to go.

Step 2 – Prepare the buckets

I used buckets from a local home improvement store. These work great and are cheap – around $2.50 each. They should last for years if the UV radiation doesn’t eat them up.

OK, once you have the buckets, you need to add some type of drain holes. I had used ¼ inch drip holes in my tomato buckets but found that they didn’t drain well enough. The holes tend to clog and the bucket turns into a swamp before too long. So this year, I started to cut slots into the buckets with a skill saw. This is pretty easy and the slots go up the side of the bucket a little ways providing a much better drain system.

Step 3 – Add compost and plant

The next step is to add compost to your buckets and plant the potatoes. I added about four inches of compost from my compost bin and planted the potatoes right in the middle of the bucket. Remember to plant the potatoes so that the sprouts are heading up in the right direction. Easy way to remember this is to plant “green side up – brown side down” just like putting down sod.

After planting, I added an inch of potting soil to cover up the sprouts and gave them all a drink of water.

As the potatoes grow they will push up through the soul and start to leaf out. Keep adding soil or compost as they grow until the bucket is full. More on that in a few weeks…

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Comment by David Parkin on June 10, 2010 at 9:31pm: My next phase is to start a bunch of sweet potatoes. I drilled out the buckets so that I will have very good drainage and will see it this works. I also have a spare place in my garden that might work so I will plant there as well.

Comment by Nick on June 10, 2010 at 7:54am: Well, I dumped over my can today. Kinda disappointed, but I expected to have limited yield due to the fact that I killed the plants about a month ago accidentally. (snapped the stems by dumping in too much compost at once :(
So I got 5 large potatoes and about 8 little bity guys. Live and learn. Earlier start, and more cautious compost additions. Maybe this year I will actually order real "seed potatoes" ??

Comment by David Parkin on June 1, 2010 at 5:48pm: Nick, I don'they have to flower. I was able to get a couple of hand fulls of potatoes and I don't recall ever seeing any flowers. Right about the time they woul dhave flowered, my plants started to die off - too much water.

Comment by Nick on June 1, 2010 at 9:20am: I am about to dump over my trachcan potatoes. They were all doing great until the last time I dumped compost on top...then all but 1 died off. None flowered so I am not hopeful. This may sound like a stupid question, but do they need to flower in order to produce?? I'll post some pics of my harvest (or sad face with empty hands)

Comment by David Parkin on May 31, 2010 at 8:11pm: Hey...nursery pots would work great - the bigger the better. The 5 gallon buckets workeds well for me as I can move then around pretty easily. As far as prain holes, I am going to drill some 1/2 inch holes to help with drainage.

Comment by David Parkin on May 31, 2010 at 8:04pm: Yes, I think I will try another batch this fall. I will be planting some sweet potatoes this coming weekend to grow throgh the summer. I am going to try some in the buckets as well. I'll post once I get started.

Comment by Nayeema Eusuf on May 31, 2010 at 5:55pm: Thanks for posting with photos David. I have been thinking about doing potatoes but did not know when to get started. Now I know what to keep on my to do list this fall.

Comment by Admin on May 31, 2010 at 5:22pm: Dave - what about using 5 or 15 gallon nursery pots - they have pretty adequate drainage holes in them already.

I agree with Alex - thanks for posting - we can all learn from this.

Comment by Alex Prescott on May 31, 2010 at 3:58pm: experimentation is how we learn, baby! for what it may be worth, i commend and thank you

Comment by David Parkin on May 31, 2010 at 2:31pm: OK I started pulling the contents of my potato buckets out. I eventually ended up with 5 buckets out of 8. The potatoes grew vigoeusly when I forgot about them but not so good when I tended them regularly. As it turns out, the drain slots were not keeping up with my watering so the buckets were getting water logged and I only got a few decent potatoes.

My plan for next year is bigger drain holes!