potatoes – Me – Ian May

Easy Grow Bags for Potatoes: A Beginner’s Guide

Today, I got some potatoes from a couple of the grow bags that I have used, and I also planted some more seed potatoes that will be ready around Christmas time.

These grow bags are a lazy way to grow potatoes. There’s no heavy digging to turn over the soil beforehand. There’s no earthing up in the usual sense. You can also put a fork through potatoes when digging them up, damaging them. Not so with a grow bag.

Just as when grown in the ground, the potato tubers are ready when the foilage on the top has died back.

When sowing new potatoes, simply put a layer of soil and/or compost at the bottom of a grow bag, then place 3 or 4 seed potatoes on top, making sure they are covered. Some potato fertiliser can be added too. Then a good watering is done. As the potatoes develop, instead of the usual earthing up, simply add more soil or compost.

This time, I am growing three varieties. Pentland Javelin, Jazzy, and Charlotte.

The ones in the photograph above are Pentland Javelin. I have enough seed potatoes for three grown bags of each variety.

All I need to do now is make sure the compost stays moist (but not waterlogged). The bags have drain holes. Also, make sure that the developing tubers stay covered. We don’t want inedible green spuds, do we?

Why so many potatoes, you may ask?

I grew these myself in the backyard, and they are delicious. Even my wife, who would almost always choose rice over potatoes, said so. I didn’t say anything at first, but she commented on how good they tasted, and it was only at that point that I told her they were from the garden and not those from the vegetable drawer in the refrigerator.

Now, I’m no gardener. I don’t have that green-fingered luck that some have. Don’t we all know someone who seems to be able to grow anything, almost anywhere, with apparent minimal effort?

I didn’t pay too much attention to the instructions. I picked a patch of earth in my garden that I knew was in decent condition in terms of a reasonable depth of soil, but beyond that, I didn’t do any testing or add anything either.

I followed the planting directions and spaced them out, but other than watering them between planting in late March and starting to harvest them now in late June, I did nothing. Perhaps I would have got more potatoes from each seed I planted. Perhaps bigger potatoes? I don’t know, but I do know that these taste so much better than anything available from supermarkets or greengrocers.

Now, I’ll see how the tomatoes are when they’re ready to pick, and then there’s the broccoli, cabbage, mini corn, red lettuce, and Brussels sprouts in the next few months.

I’ll report back. Watch this space.