# Potato barrel?



## valannb22 (Jan 6, 2012)

Anyone grow their potatoes this way? It looked fairly easy, so I was wondering how your success rate was if you grow them this way.


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## PrepN4Good (Dec 23, 2011)

Hi val! Yes, I've tried this, in a plastic barrel cut in half. Then DH & I tipped the thing over after the plants died back & raked out the taters. Simple enough. One advantage of growing them in a bed (IMHO) is that they're easier to rake out a few at a time.


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## Meerkat (May 31, 2011)

Maybe next year, we just planted potatoes a few weeks ago. But we do want to try the buckets later on. We already have one new thign going on' hydroponics' so will try this next tiem.

Our friend did it last year and they were very pleased with bucket or trash can potatos.


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## mosquitomountainman (Jan 25, 2010)

If it is a deep barrel you need to puta perferated pipe in the center to be sure that the water goes all the way to the bottom when you water it. Works good otherwise.


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## valannb22 (Jan 6, 2012)

Thanks! None of the stuff I read mentioned anything like that.


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## Hooch (Jul 22, 2011)

taters are like weeds around here once planted....tasty weeds tho  I tried the bucket planting ( it was one of those really large buckets) and it didnt work out all that good. I got some taters but nothing like if they were in the ground. 
Im going to try tater towers this year...


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## Sentry18 (Aug 5, 2012)

> Potato barrel?


For some reason I came here expecting to read about a potato 'canon' barrel you were making to fend of conservatives.


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## valannb22 (Jan 6, 2012)

Nah, my smart mouth generally takes care of any that wander too close  If not, my conservative hubby can take care of them


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## Locutus (Apr 24, 2012)

Here are my experimental potato beds. They're made out of cedar fence boards, and cedar 2x2's in the corners. Two boards high (11 1/2 inches) they use four boards, one 36" 2x2 and a few galvanized fence nails. That's about $12.00. Then there's the soil. I'm mixing Cedar Grove Veggie (3-way) bulk soil mix plus peat moss at 3 to 1, plus a little triple phosphate and muriate of potash. That's probably about $5.00 per box at two boards high. The nice thing about this design is that it's easy to make more squares and stack them, adding more soil mix as the potatoes grow. At two boards high I planted three layers of cut and chitted seed potato chunks, about 36 chunks per layer per box. I don't know if that's too many or not. We'll see.


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## jeff47041 (Jan 5, 2013)

For those of you that have done this,
When you use something like a blue barrel, do you drill holes in the bottom for drainage?

I'm guessing you would plant and then gradually add dirt kind of like hilling> does that sound right?

Do you start off with about 10" of dirt in the bottom before setting the seed?


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## Bobbb (Jan 7, 2012)

1.) If you use a deep barrel do you have to compensate for the reduced sunlight that gets down to the bottom of the barrel when you start this process and before you've built up the soil to the top of the barrel? 

2.) With the central watering pipe do you decrease the frequency of the holes cut into the pipe the deeper the pipe goes in order to insure that all of the water doesn't filter out at the bottom or is that exactly where you want the water to go?


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## PackerBacker (Dec 13, 2012)

valannb22 said:


> Anyone grow their potatoes this way? It looked fairly easy, so I was wondering how your success rate was if you grow them this way.


Do you need a barrel? (As in not having ground to plant in?)

I ask because so many of these "ideas" are just gimmick unless truly needed.

Potatoes are so easy planted in the ground. They like to be hilled and mulched. This keeps the soil cool and moist. It's hard to keep the soil cool in a barrel.

Here mulched potatoes don't need watering. They have to be watered in a barrel.

Harvesting potatoes from the ground isn't difficult and they store the best in the ground. Once the vines die back I pull the mulch from between the rows up over and cover the rows. This keeps them cool and moist and then warm when the weather starts to freeze. I wait for the last possible day to dig them. That way my cellar has cooled as much as possible to store them. This year I dug them in mid Dec just before a 16" blizzard.


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## Bobbb (Jan 7, 2012)

PackerBacker said:


> Do you need a barrel? (As in not having ground to plant in?)
> 
> I ask because so many of these "ideas" are just gimmick unless truly needed.


I don't see this as a gimmick, I see it as an efficient use of space. The "problem" with gardening is that it's, mostly, a 2 dimensional activity - you use the surface of the garden (and a little bit underneath) and these barrels allow you to concentrate your activity vertically. Besides, water usage is more efficient - in a garden the water your plants don't use keeps going down, down, down until it hits an aquifer but in a barrel the water keeps nourishing deep roots. Also there is less surface evaporation because, well, there's less surface per growing area.

I'm going to try this this year and compare output per surface area of garden. If I can do in a barrel what I can do in 100 sf of garden then that allows me to plant something else in the freed up space.


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## PackerBacker (Dec 13, 2012)

Bobbb said:


> I don't see this as a gimmick, I see it as an efficient use of space. The "problem" with gardening is that it's, mostly, a 2 dimensional activity - you use the surface of the garden (and a little bit underneath) and these barrels allow you to concentrate your activity vertically.


It's doubtful that I could grow any more potatoes in the barrel than I could in the ground the barrel sits on.


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## valannb22 (Jan 6, 2012)

From the info I've seen, some people tilt the barrels toward the sun to get more light when the plants are farther down. 

I don't really need to use a barrel, I have a couple acres I can plant on. There is a big problem with wildlife getting to anything planted though. My parents planted the first two years after they bought the property and lost a good part of their plants to moles/gophers and other animals. I think the barrel would keep those out and I want to use raised beds for other plants with hardware mesh in the bottom and deer fence around the tops. I have a bunch of large plastic tubs I'm not using, so it's cheaper to use what I have laying around vs building more raised beds.


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## AuroraHawk (Sep 12, 2012)

I don't know about barrels but I will be planting potatoes in feed bags and old blue jeans, hung on the privacy fence. Potatoes like light soil and they like lots of air. Those old blue jeans and feed bags should allow for a lot of air circulation. We have a rain drip irrigation system and will extend it to the bags and blue jeans.


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