One Tater, Two Tater, Three Tater, Four

Many years ago, when I bought my first house (it was in Bellevue, Nebraska), I decided to follow the prophet's counsel to plant a garden and use the harvest to feed my family and preserve for the future. With the headstrong boldness of youth, I rototilled a garden space about 20 ft by 20ft in the middle of the backyard, incorporated a truckload of cow manure, and started planting. With this garden I had enough space to plant potatoes, and since potatoes are almost my favorite thing to eat, I planted a bunch. It required a lot of digging and maintenance, but it was sure worth it! I harvested TONS of potatoes! And with my cool, dark basement, they lasted through the winter, too. Here in Virginia, space is limited, but I still want to have potatoes of my own. I learned about a method of growing potatoes in a garbage can from our county extension agency for when space is a problem. I also looked it up on the internet and found a number of youtube videos of interest. Just google "growing potatoes in a garbage can" and you'll come up with lots of hits. In addition, my "garden Bible" described how to do this also.

So, I bought a 32 gallon black plastic garbage can (the black color keeps things hotter for better growing conditions) for $15.00, two bags of garden soil, and seed potatoes (Idaho baking type). Next I drilled holes in the bottom and around the bottom sides of the can for drainage. I put about 6 inches of soil in the can, added the potatoes--six of them--with the eyes facing upwards, and then added another 4 inches of soil. Watered well. When the potatoes had sprouted and the leaves were about 6 inches tall, I added more soil until only about 1 inch of leaves were showing. When the stems are covered with soil, potatoes will sprout off the stems, making the harvest that much greater than if you just let the plants grow untended. As the plants grow, I add more soil until the garbage can is full. Below I have pictures showing the progress of my garbage can potatoes after having added soil for the first time and almost ready for another addition. Later in the summer, after the plants flower and start to fade, then you harvest the crop by simply pulling up the plants and dumping everything out of the garbage can to retrieve the potatoes. The soil can then be added to the main garden and rototilled in for the next year. I'll keep you posted on the progress of my little experiment. If it works well, I might try two garbage cans next season!