How to Grow Garbage Bag Potatoes

Field-grown potatoes are more likely to suffer insect damage.

While potatoes are usually grown in the soil, with access to a sunny balcony, even apartment dwellers can raise a large crop of potatoes. Given proper care, container-grown potatoes are often better quality than those grown in-ground as they don't need to force their way though hard clay soil, don't encounter rocks and don't risk being gouged by a shovel during harvest. You don't even need a proper container, a garbage bag does just fine.

Things You'll Need

• Certified seed potatoes
• Heavy-duty black garbage bags
• Potting soil
• Peat moss, vermiculite or chopped dried leaves

Instructions

1. Set out certified disease-free seed potatoes in a sunny area with temperatures from 60 to 70 F one to two weeks before you plan to plant them. This encourages them to sprout. You can attempt to sprout grocery-store potatoes, but these are not treated to be rot and disease resistant, and are sometimes treated with sprout inhibitors.

2. Open up a heavy-duty garbage bag and poke holes in the bottom of the bag adequate to provide drainage for the potatoes during the growing season. The plants rot if allowed to sit in water.

3. Prepare a soil mixture of sterile potting soil mixed with peat moss, vermiculite and/or chopped, dead leaves. Fill a garbage bag half-way with your soil mixture, the roll down the sides to soil level. If you anticipate wind and/or rain before you plant your sprouted seed potatoes, just close the bags without rolling down the sides. Be sure to have your bags in a place where they can remain during the growing season. You do not want to have to move a heavy bag of wet soil and your plants once they are growing. Choose a location for your garbage bag planters that provides full or partial sunlight.

4. Cut the seed potatoes into pieces with a clean knife when they have strong, sturdy shoots about 2 inches long. Each piece should have one to two sprouts each. Plant them just under the soil in your garbage bag planter, with the sprouts facing up. Water thoroughly. Plant no more than five of your sprouted seed potatoes per bag, one in the center and the other four a few inches from that, spaced evenly around the outer edges of the bag, but not too close to the outer edges. Then fill the bags almost to the top with the remainder of your soil mixture.

5. Gently add more of the soil mixture when the plants reach 9 inches tall. Cover no more than one-third the vine's length, leaving some foliage exposed. Repeat as the plants grow, until the bag is nearly filled with soil. As they grow, the planted seed potatoes first produce roots, then stems and leaves and finally flowers and tubers. The tubers growing under the soil will eventually turn into your homegrown potatoes, all along the length of the underground stems.

6. Water every two to three days, especially when they begin to produce flowers. If you over-water, the leaves get moldy. If you want to produce larger potatoes, pinch off any flowers that the plants produce.

7. Cut open the bag and harvest the potatoes about 10 days after the vines and foliage have died.

Tips & Warnings

• When exposing your seed potatoes to sunlight to sprout before planting, they will develop green areas that are poisonous. Therefore, place them in a location that is well out of reach of young children and pets.

References

• Washington State University Extension: Potato Tower
• Texas A&M University Extension: Vegetable Gardening in Containers