Taters!

I do tend to obsess. The gardening bug is back. And who is intimidated by the fact that it is not my home and there is precious little room to plant? Pas moi, mon amis.

In the course of moving and reorganizing and throwing out and giving away, etc, I ended up with one plastic box with no lid. Obviously, you say, you would want to grow potatoes in that, right? Of course I would. It is a little bigger than 1' x 2' x 1' so I figured it could handle about three seed potatoes.


All I had to do was put some holes in the bottom of the box. The best way I have found to do that is to heat something sharpish and metal with a non-conductive handle and melt your way through. Much easier than drilling.


Done. A little liner and I was ready to go. I only needed some seed potatoes.


Well, seed potatoes are about $6 for a bag of 10 or so and I could not bring myself to do it, especially when they were not even anything special - just russet potatoes.

I thought I remembered buying potatoes shortly before I moved and I knew I would not have thrown them out. Nothing in my room stunk, so they could not have gone bad yet so I looked and as luck would have it, I found my bag already wildly sprouting. The bag knew we were already three months into potato planting season.


In the course of selecting potatoes, I broke off some of the larger sprouts. As an experiment, I planted a few of them too. You can see by looking at them that they have little root nodes on them. All in all I planted three separate sprouts and three potatoes.

By mutual agreement, I placed the box next to the SFG (square foot garden). Not terribly attractive but handy.

If you are wondering why I am growing them in such a little bit of soil, it is because potatoes actually grow from the vine of the plant, not the root. So as the plant develops leaves and stems, one adds more soil leaving a few inches of leaves. Every time the plant is six inches or so above the soil line, more soil is added and so forth. By the end of the season the box is full of dirt and there will still be green at the top.

Why grow my own potatoes when they are so cheap? Because a fresh potato is surprisingly good. You would have to taste it to believe it. They are tender and delicious like nothing you can get from a bag. Believe it or not. I am hooked. Now I just need a butter and sour cream plant.