Some more planting took place this week. Have you ever heard of planting potatoes in a laundry basket? Hehe…neither did we.
Until we started reading all kinds of gardening blogs and saw people saying they were having a lot of success with this method. We figured, “Hey – we’ve got a laundry basket. And potatoes with eyes. So…why not?” It might not be the most thought-out plan, but oh well. We’re okay with failure.
So the method is this: Take a laundry basket (ours was from a bargain-basement kind of store. It cost .89 cents), and fill it with about 2 inches of soil and compost. Next we laid the potatoes about every 3-5″ along the very outside of the basket with the eyes pointing out. We then covered it with more soil.
The idea is that as the potatoes begin to sprout and grow, we should gradually fill the baskets with soil, simulating “hilling” the potatoes in a garden.
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We also need to keep the basket well-watered and in time we should expect to have a Potato Medusa! Now if that doesn’t sound fun, I don’t know what does.
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Once the potatoes have all died back in the late summer/fall, it’s harvest time! No shovels, no digging…simply tip over the laundry basket and pick out the potatoes. Now that sounds doable!
Several of the sites I’ve read said this method should yield 8-10 lbs of potatoes per basket. We figured we’d start with this one basket. We don’t want to overdo it or anything. HA! If it seems to be going well, we’ll plant another 2 or 3 in another couple of months. I’d certainly like more than 8-10 pounds of potatoes.
If this works, and I don’t know how it couldn’t, this would be a great renters homesteading method. It’s non-intrusive. It’s really pretty portable. And we can keep it on our porch or front walkway (although it is a little unsightly. Neighbors might protest a little). But we can deal with them.
Happily Homesteading!
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OOOOHHH! I like it. I’ve heard of growing potatoes in a garbage barrel but this sounds better to me! I live in a 3rd floor apartment but have some 2nd floor roof space outside my kitchen window. Maybe my landlord may let me grow some potatoes on it if I promise to be gentle or something. I’ve got potatoes with eyes and about 3 laundry baskets I don’t use (since I only have a family of 2 currently), so once I buy some dirt and a get the landlord blessing maybe I could be growing potatoes real soon! That would be so fun and cool! Thanks for sharing Julie!
I would think you could do this Amanda! I hope you get a yes from your landlord.
What a fun idea!!!
Neat! I’ve never seen this idea before, but it makes a lot of sense. Let us know how it works!
I will! Thus far…no signs of life.
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Reblogged this on backtubasic and commented:
I may need to try thins
Love it! I’ve got the basket, potatoes (with eyes), and dirt. I’ll be starting tomorrow. Thank you JulieAnn
Great! Let us know how it goes for you!
So, I see you wrote this in March and it’s now October. Any luck? How did it all turn out?
Yep! Here’s my follow up post about it: http://thehomesteadexperiment.com/2012/08/22/about-those-potatoes-growing-in-the-laundry-basket/
How do you keep the dirt from just falling out through the holes?
The dirt we used was pretty wet so while some did fall out, most stayed just fine. And once the plant began to grow, none of it fell out. You’re best bet is to assemble it right at the place you’re planning to leave it.
You can line the basket with newspaper
Did you use whole potatoes or did you just plant parts of the potato with the eyes?
I used potatoes from my pantry. I cut them so each piece had at least one eye on it and stuck it in the dirt and it worked great! lol~ This year I’ve decided to actually invest in seed potatoes which are small whole potatoes to use for planting. We’ll see if the investment was worth it.
thank you thank you for the reply
Carm
I try!