Deborah...I don't know about the bugs, but there are 2 great reasons to grow your own potatoes...yes, they taste GREAT! You can't quite compare the difference to tomatoes, though. You can't get a good tomato from a store, the potatoes you grow at home just have more taste, better taste. AND...new potatoes cost a fortune, so if you only harvest new potatoes, and nothing else, you really save lots. New potatoes can be dug when the plants are blossoming...and there will still be potatoes at the end of the season, they produce a lot.

* * * *

Dave
Even my growlights are getting restless!

You can grow potatoes under straw and not have to turn any soil either to plant them or dig them. (You can actually lift the straw up and pinch a few as they are developing or just to show the kids.)

* * * *

The secret is the soil.

Thanks,too Longy.... we must have been posting at the same time.

* * * *

I covered my taters with dirt then straw when they were 3" tall. There 5" now. Do I cover the entire plant with dirt or leave any showing??

* * * *
I feel more like I do now than I did before I ever felt this way.

Yes you need to leave some foliage above ground, just keep raking dirt or adding straw as they get taller.

* * * *

I have a bale of hay that I am going to give this a try.

* * * *


One OS to rule them, one OS to find them:
One OS to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Redmond where the shadows lie.

To Deborah: I get potato bugs on the foliage and put Sevin dust on them, or spray. The post above from comfrey is interesting, maybe I'll try that this year, and put my beans next to the potatoes.

You said you could only grow in containers...I read that growing potatoes in tires yielded big crops. I've already planted mine in the ground, but I have a few more that I'm going to experiment with in a tire. From what I remember, fill one tire with dirt, plant a few seed potatoes in it. After the foliage is a few inches tall, stack another tire one top of the first one and put more dirt in, covering some of the foliage, but leaving a couple of inches showing. Continue stacking new tires and filling with dirt until you have three to four tires (?) high. The article said that method produced larger yields than in the ground. I'll let you know how it turns out!

As far as the ones in the ground, I plant them about three inches deep, and when the foliage is a few inches high, I "hill" them up with more dirt on each side of the row, leaving some foliage showing. I do this about three times as the foliage grows. This is to prevent "sunburned" potatoes, which produces green peels that I've read are toxic.

Deborah are you going to try the bag idea this year? I would like to know if it turns out!

* * * *

I hate those dang rabbits

We plant potatoes every year. Nothing tastes better than a potato you go out and dig up for supper! We grow Kennebec potatoes here. They are a very nice yeilding crops. Speaking of which I need to check out the seed potatoes that we wintered. We didn't have any potato bugs last year. But they say you typically don't the first year you plant them. I will find out this year as it will be the 2nd year planting them here. They kinda look like ladybugs only they are brown in color. If you find them on the plants you need to pick them off and I suffocate them in a jar. I try not to treat my garden with any pesticides.

* * * *
~Heidi

Comfrey, I never knew that about potatos (beans\potatos keeps the bugs away). I grew both last year and I NEVER saw any potato bugs. Only a few bugs in the beans and that was at the end of the beans life cycle. Of course I had dug up the potatos by then. Glad I planted them early as the drought was getting bad the potatos were done.