I have had problems putting potatoes in ground. How are you planting them?? Grow bags? Potato bags? Mounding in beds?
Throw out to everyone—Grow bags seem like might be worth a try but the potato bags seem expensive...
Last year, I used old white plastic buckets with the bottom cut off.
I placed them on the ground, put some fertilizer on the dirt, and mixed it in. Then laid the potatoes on the ground, and covered them with wood chips. As the plants grew, I would cover them with more wood chips.
The plants reached an enormous size and it seems that the ones in the buckets did not have tomato hornworm issues. However the Colorado potato beetles had no trouble with them. But it was far easier to check those plants as they were taller than the ones in the ground so there was not as much bending over to do.
I did plant some in the ground last year and of the ones in the ground, about half of them were half eaten by slugs, I’m guessing. I saved those for my seed potatoes for this year and they are in now, as of today.
A friend told me that he used wood chips to cover his potatoes instead of dirt, so I figured I’d try it, and the ones in the buckets covered with the wood chips came out beautiful They were big, came out clean, and were not eaten. I guess slugs don’t like wood chips.
This year, I am also using some sections of culvert pipe that mr. mm replaced and cut up for me. I am also going to try getting two layers out of them. I figure that when the culvert pipe sections are half full of wood chips, I will add some more dirt, fertilize that, and them plant some more potatoes, offset from the ones already coming up. I’ll let folks know how that works out sometime in the fall.
Other option than buying grow bags are to use feed bags or pet food bags with holes in them for drainage. Some of those bags can be pretty robust.
The only thing about the container potatoes, or any container crop, is to watch the moisture level. They can be prone to drying out and inconsistent watering can lead to hollow heart in potatoes. We had a dry spell last spring and I was not diligent about watering, and some of my potatoes had that.
The two varieties I am growing are Kennebec and Red Pontiac, and it seems that the Red Pontiac did better than the Kennebec.
Both the Red Pontiac and Kennebec kept very well.
For a good six months after digging them and curing them, they were still juicy when I cut into them.