I've known folks who were raised in the middle of Virginia, and they said they left their root veggies on the ground in their gardens, covered with leaves & straw. Our winters don't get that cold...and I can't believe such an arrangement is critter-proof. But that's what they did. Perhaps the climate is just different enough when you get nearer the mountains. So I wondered if others here followed similar practices.
Maybe someone will know, but these small garden tater growing methods aren't producing enough to worry about. @Yvonne Smith -- how did your potato crop turn out? Are you still growing potatoes?
In the video, it worked great. For me, it didn’t; but it was probably my inexperience. The potato tops grew fine, but didn’t produce many potatoes. The next year, I overwatered them, and drowned the potatoes. I think it is a viable idea, but I am not going to do it. However, the sweet potatoes did much better that way, and I should have started them sooner because they didn’t have time to grow very large before I harvested. Another thing, is that the sweet potato vines are a healthy green and easy to pick and cook, so for me, it is worthwhile even without the sweet potatoes. Definitely doing that in tubs/bins again this year !
I've been watching a few videos. Seems like most people put no more than 5 or 6 seed potatoes in a 10-gallon bag. I'm fuzzy on the whole, "add more soil" thing. I think I'll probably just plant the potatoes about 4" from the bottom of the bag and then fill with composted soil and see what happens. I'm going to try this woman's method... (6 min video)
The idea of the add more soil thing is that you cover the potato starts with a few inches of dirt/compost, etc and let them sprout. Then they get about 6 inches tall, then you layer on a few inches more dirt, and the potatoes make more roots along the vine, so another layer of potatoes forming. Keep doing this as the potatoes grow, and by the time you get to the top, you are supposed to have several layers of where the plants sent out more roots and will make potatoes all the way up, and not just at the bottom.
Potatoes root upward, so if you place your seed potatoes at ground level, they won't root much beneath that level but will, rather develop roots along its growth upward. So if you keep adding soil around the base of the plant that surfaces, you will increase the area in which potatoes can grow. For example, using a cardboard box or paper bag, you can start out with only about for inches of soil. As the plant surfaces and grows upward, it will develop potatoes within that four-inch area of soil. If you add more soil along the base of the plant, you will increase the area in which potatoes can develop.
Oh, I get it. I'm just thinking that I don't remember my parents ever doing anything special when they planted potatoes in the field. There may have been some trenching going on but I don't remember it.
Nor do I, and that was my dad's main cash crop. I didn't pay a lot of attention to such things but I'm thinking that, with a couple of hundred acres of potatoes, it wouldn't make sense to spend a lot of time on any one potato plant. I think the idea of doing this in gardening is so that we can get the maximum yield out of the relatively few plants that we grow. However, I was enlisted in the picking of potatoes at harvest time, and he managed to get quite a few potatoes from each plant. My guess is that they were simply planted deep to begin with.
Back when I had my larger raised bed garden, I'd toss potato peels and other kitchen "stuff" directly onto the garden during the winter and let it decompose. One year I had some gorgeous volunteer potato plants but they didn't yield much.
We use to plant a lot of potatoes. We would plant Kennebec or Cobbler seed potatoes. We slice them leaving a few eyes on each piece, and then lay them out to dry for a few days. We would dig a shallow trench and plant each piece with the eye side up. After done planting the seed potatoes, we would “hill” the trench of potatoes. I have dug many potatoes over the years. We stored them in potato sacks after they had dried a little. They were delicious! New potatoes and green beans, yum! Awe, tasty memories.
I watched a show years ago about growing potatoes using a stack of old truck tires. You fill the inside of the tire with soil and place your spuds inside the tires and cover. After you stack as many tires you can you cover them with soil and they grow well even in extreme cold due to being so well insulated. It doesn't consume a lot of area to grow quite a crop,
That's like throwing out a carrot green, you find a nice carrot growing soon. I like turnips and cabbage and of course taters and carrots. I haven't made a good stew in at least 4 years. I just completely stopped cooking. I was in the shower a while ago and I was thinking about taking out a bank loan and buy a dozen eggs and some good sausage links to go with my grits.
I actually decided to pass on it, too. Sometimes I get a little over-zealous with this stuff. "Sounded like a good idea at the time" is my personal mantra.