The risk you face using store bought potatoes that have sprouted is that the potatoes have likely been treated with heaven knows what and may even have diseases that you don't want spread throughout your garden.

I would recommend getting seed potatoes from a reputable nursery or mail order house.

Lastly, if you really want to grow potatoes, I'd recommend Build-As-You-Grow bins. They're cheap and easy to build and allow you to grow tons of potatoes and rob new potatoes very easily. Check out the link.

Here is a link that might be useful: Build-As-You-Grow Potato Bins

I agree with Sinfonain -- the build-as-you-grow will work very well with square foot gardening. If you want, you can put the bin inside one of your beds or use it as a stand alone.

Here is a link that might be useful: Judy's Square Foot Garden Blog

sinfonian-

how many seed potatoes do you plant in a 2.5 x 2.5 ft box? 1? 2? 3? 4? 965.8?

See the link below. He says to plant them 5" apart.

Here is a link that might be useful: Ciscoe Potatoes

I plan on doing as many as I can fit with about 6" clearance around. I hope that's not too close. Technically I think you should do 1 foot apart which means only two or three seeds per bin. That would be really limiting.

I'm going to try it out and see. And yes, Ciscoe and Ed Hume are local legends! My early research included bookmarking their potato pages.

Here is a link that might be useful: Sinfonian's SFG adventure!

Sinfo....I have put 5 in each square-one in the dead middle, and the other 4 in the "normal" spacing that you use when planting somethink like lettuce. I just cover them up. I don't have time to wait till they grow, cover with a little more soil, watch them grow some more, go out and cover, etc. I have over 40 pounds of potatoes that I grown in 4X2 section of my garden. I do let them go through the entire growing season though-I live in Utah, so that is about 7 months or so.

There's nothing wrong with growing potatoes any way you get to work for you. It works for tradional row farmers and has for centuries. 40 pounds is a ton of potatoes. That's awesome.

So 5 potatoes per SF. That's tight. If that works well then I'm fine planting every 6 inches in my beds. Thanks!

Here is a link that might be useful: Sinfonian's gardening adventure

Hi all!!! Thank you so much for the replies.. I posted this a while back, and completely forgot about it, and I am so glad to see the replies.. I planted my potatoes, having not too much of a clue what to do... They grew, but they are pretty tall right now. Can I still continue with the method described and bury the majority of them, or is it too late, and I shoudl jsut pull them all up and start over? Is there any way to do this IN the SFG itself, or does that just not work? The copy of SFG I got had nothing in it about potatoes.

thanks a bunch!
n