I still have a few seed potatoes left over from planting, so I decided to set up this container to plant potatoes in. I know it's rather late to plant potatoes where I live, but they're a short season variety, Norland Red, 90 to 100 days. If we have a good September, I should get a few potatoes from this container.
Anyhoo, I did a pictorial of how I set this container up so that it would be easy for a beginning gardener to follow.
First, the container. This is an old tote that I've had for a while. I used to use it to cover the motor on the tiller, but I had to replace the motor last year, and now it doesn't fit. Since this tote does not have a matching lid, it seemed a good choice for this.
I drilled a bunch of drainage holes in the bottom using a 1/2 inch spade bit. They don't have to be 1/2 inch, that's just what I went with.
I put a piece of landscape cloth in the bottom to keep the dirt from coming out of the drainage holes.
Then I started putting the dirt in the tote. The first dirt is used to snug the landscape cloth up to the bottom edges of the tote.
Then I started filling the tote. I used garden dirt mixed with vermiculite. The vermiculite helps keep the dirt from compacting too much and also helps with water retention in dry weather.
I put the tote in place in the container garden before I started filling it. It's a lot easier to move when almost empty than when half full of dirt.
When I got the tote halfway full, I cut a seed potato in half and planted both halves in the dirt.
Then I put enough dirt in the tote to cover up the potatoes. I left one of the sprouts just poking out of the dirt.
When the potatoes grow as tall as the top of the tote, I'll add more dirt to "hill them up". In this case, I don't know if I'll get more potatoes that way because of how late I got them started. However, nothing ventured, nothing gained.
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