Following! I would like to grow some as well.

Very interesting. Thank for the link.

wonder if you could grow sweet potatoes the same way??

I grew sweet potatoes in the same bags purchased for the potatoes. I can't say I got a good harvest, but they were planted late so not the best test.

I live in Tulsa and have grown potatoes in pots, 15 gal fabric grow bags, and dollar store bushel laundry baskets lined with landscape fabric and filled with a mixture of garden soil, compost and some fertilizer. I watch the moisture level and just let the plants do their thing. My experience has been very good with each method. I've managed to fill up a couple of computer paper boxes each season.

loved that video.what are the grow bags made out of ??

I don't know what he uses in the video. I have some like this potato bag and I have the big version of this BigBagBed, which I think would be good and is made in OK.

Someone on this forum has grown them in cardboard boxes and said she got great yields, but I don't remember who it was.

I have grown them in containers, including molasses feed tubs (which are roughly the same size as whiskey half-barrel planters) and in a 4' round galvanized stock tank with drainage holes drilled in the bottom, and got decent yields. However, I feel like I get the largest yield per plant from potatoes grown in the ground, so that's the only way I grow them now. When the weather is getting hot and it isn't raining, potatoes in containers can need to be watered as frequently as once a day, while those in the ground do not need such frequent irrigation. I grow mine in raised beds that are about 18" above grade level, and I dig down roughly 8-9" when planting seed potatoes. Once they emerge above the soil line, I mulch well and that is important, so leave room at the top of your container for several inches of mulch to protect potato tubers from turning green due to sunlight exposure, which renders them inedible (for safety reasons). It isn't that you cannot eat obviously green potatoes, but that you should not.

When growing in containers, it is important to use a soil-less mix, not soil dug out of the ground, in order to have adequate drainage. Choose varieties recommended for Oklahoma, plant them on time (mid-Feb through early March), and keep them evenly moist all the time to avoid producing knobby potatoes. Do not over-irrigate or you can get cracked or split potatoes.

Potatoes grow best when daytime temperatures are between 60-75 degrees and nighttime temperatures are between 45-55 degrees. Regardless of when you plant the potatoes, they are going to set and size up their tubers before the soil temperature reaches 85 degrees. If you plant too late, they won't get much time to produce tubers before we reach those temperatures. You dig them after the foliage dies back. If you leave potatoes in the soil once the standard OK heat/humidity set in for the summer, they can collapse into a watery, rotting mess, so harvest promptly. They are heavy feeders and like rich soil. If you are going to fertilize them, all the fertilizer (use a slow-release pelleted form that releases over a period of weeks to months) should be worked into the soil-less mix prior to planting. Avoid using too much nitrogen or you may get tons of foliage at the expense of the tubers.

If you don't get a year's worth of potatoes from your spring plants, you can plant again for fall although it is hard to find seed potatoes for fall. You can get around this by buying extras in winter/spring and storing them in your refrigerator to keep them from sprouting too early. You generally cannot harvest your cool-season crop in May or June and then turn around and use the small potatoes almost immediately for the fall crop because just-harvested potatoes need a period of dormancy before sprouting can be induced. You also can try sprouting organic store-bought potatoes for fall (because the organic ones are not sprayed with anti-sprouting agents like conventional potatoes are).

I am growing my potatoes (i just planted them last week) in a 4' x 4' box that is about 3 feet tall. The box is just a random box my husband put together out of scraps from our shop that was built in the fall. I can't wait to see how they do. It's filled with compost and some purchased soil from Minicks. The soil seems a bit sandy. I put about a foot of dirt/compost into the box and dug trenches that were maybe 6 inches deep and planted the potatoes there and covered. I plan on adding dirt (or mulch?) when the plants come up and as they grow.

Last spring I just put them in the ground in little hills. The excessive rain in May killed them, but they were doing well until that time...or I think they were.

I tried again in the fall. But, like Dawn said, I couldn't find seed potatoes. And in an impulsive moment, I planted some organic potatoes from Natural Grocers that we didn't eat soon enough. They had started sprouting. I didn't have many, but put them in the ground and we had a small harvest. Very small--but they were SO yummy.

For this spring, I purchased a couple of varieties of seed potatoes, but had some old organic potatoes (we didn't eat soon enough) that I planted last week as well.

I planted them in a waxing moon, BUT it was St. Patrick's Day!

I/m further south than you, so I usually plant around Valentine's day, or no later than Washington's Birthday. Some years it has been so excessively wet that I couldn't plant until much later, and got crappy yields, so I do try to plant on time. The window for potato production is fairly limited here due to our heat. Technically, rain did not kill my potatoes last year, but it caused diseases that killed some of them. My raised beds drained well enough, which was surprising since we got 24" of rain just in the month of May with quite a bit more over the next 6 weeks, so the potatoes didn't rot, but diseases got one section of one bed. Honestly, if my whole garden had died last year after all the extreme rainfall, I wouldn't have been surprised. Even raised beds might not drain well enough in a year like that. Many of my friends here in our county who grow at grade level did lose most if not all their gardens to the rain last year, but the raised beds saved mine, even with water standing in the pathways between raised beds for 2-3 months. It was so rainy that frogs moved out of the ponds into my greenhouse to live last year, and one was still there yesterday, scaring the crap out of me when he started making noise (I wasn't expecting croaking at 3 pm in the greenhouse). We moved him to the big pond yesterday because the cats and turkeys heard him and came into the greenhouse looking for him. The turkeys think the greenhouse is a turkey day spa and snack bar.

If y'all haven't bought seed potatoes yet, and if you have an Atwood's near you, you might find them on clearance at Atwood's. The Atwood's in Gainesville has had their seed potatoes and bundles of onions on clearance at 50% off for the last couple of weeks.

As Okiedawn mentioned, potatoes stop setting tubers when soil warms to 85 degrees. This will happen sooner in pots than it does in the ground. Anything you can do to keep your growing containers cool(er) will help with both size and number of spuds. One simple trick might be to pile straw or mulch around the containers to shield them from the sun. My potatoes, in a raised bed, are just starting to poke their leaves up.

The turkeys think the greenhouse is a turkey day spa and snack bar.

lol thank you for my morning laugh okiedawn.....

i think i will try and get the potatoes planted and then have no expectations.actually with everything i am doing this year i am trying to have no expectations lol so i don't have such anxiety.....

i checked on my onions yesterday and several plants were uprooted on top of the ground.either the cats got bored and played pokeypaw and pulled them up or the wind did it.....

leava, There's always something going on here around our place that is good for a laugh. With all our animals, neighbors' animals that visit, and wildlife, it seems like it always is a three-ring circus here.

It isn't entirely too late to plant potatoes, but just remember next year that the earlier you plant, the better the yield because the longer period of cold weather gives them more time to produce. My potatoes have been in the ground about 5 weeks and most of them have emerged above the soil line a couple of inches or more, which means they've already grown vertically 8-10" or more. The potatoes form along the stolon that runs upward from the stem underground. That's why you plant them so deeply---to give them a lot of soil in which to form potatoes. If you plant the seed potatoes 2" below the soil level, they don't have much to work with.

Don't let the anxiety get to you. I've never had a year in which the potatoes produced nothing, unless extreme rain/cold in combination caused the seed to rot, which has only happened once.

If I find uprooted onions, it definitely is the cats. If I find uprooted corn, it is the crows. It's always something.

Dawn

If you want more potatoes, just help us harvest. We expect between 7,000 and 12,000 pounds this year. We have already planted Irish Cobbler, Red Pontiac, Kennebec and All Blue fingerlings.

Johnny

Vision Farms, Inc.