If you’re anything like me, you absolutely love potatoes. Maybe my love for this vegetable comes from my Irish heritage, or maybe it’s because no matter how they’re prepared, potatoes are just that good. Wouldn’t it be great if you could grow your very own potatoes at home? Well, thanks to some great tips from our friends at Housekeeping, you can now learn how to grow fresh potatoes at home, using a bucket. Here’s the article….

20 DIY Blogs Show You How to Plant Potatoes in a Bucket

Planting potatoes in a bucket may sound funny, but it’s actually an efficient way to utilize your space and save yourself some back-breaking labor during harvest season. You need ample space to grow potatoes in a garden, and the soil has to be turned and soft enough for the potatoes to grow and thrive. It also needs to be free from diseases and pests, and maintaining the garden can end up being a lot of work. If you don’t have the space or the time to get a potato garden up and running, you may want to consider growing them in a bucket instead. Take a look at these 20 blog entries to learn the ins and outs of successfully growing potatoes in a bucket.

Preparing the Buckets

Before you begin planting, you want to make sure the buckets are clean and that you have poked or drilled drainage holes in the bucket. Putting gravel in the bottom of the bucket will help with drainage, as well keep the holes from clogging up.  Figure out what kind of soil you want to use in the buckets and get ready to start planting! These five blog posts will give you all of the instructions you need for preparing the buckets.

• Planting Potatoes in a Bucket When picking out buckets, you’ll want to choose pots ranging in size from 5 gallons to 15 gallons.
• Planting Potatoes Once you have your 5 gallon buckets, you’ll need to drill holes in the bottoms for drainage and prepare the potting mix to add to the buckets.
• Experimenting with Potato Planting Methods This blogger explains how to cut the bottom off of a bucket and put it on top of turned dirt in the garden.
• Potatoes in Buckets 2.0 (Finally!) Learn how to modify your bucket to create a self-watering feature with the help of this blogger.
• Growing Potatoes in Buckets Be sure to add gravel to the bottom of your buckets to make sure the drainage holes don’t clog up.

Planting and Growing the Potatoes        

After you’ve planted the potatoes, you’ll need to continue adding soil as they grow so that the potatoes form under the dirt.  Make sure to keep the soil moist but not wet, because that will cause the potatoes to rot.  To learn more about caring for the potatoes, read these five blog articles.

• When and How to Plant Potatoes You’ll want to plant potatoes when it’s cool outside, and choose potatoes from the greenhouse instead of grocery store potatoes. For more trips, check out this post!
• How to Grow Potatoes in a Bucket This post has a funny video complete with a song that will teach you how to grow potatoes in a bucket.
• Potato Bucket Part 1 After you prep the bucket, learn how to cut and prepare the eyes of the potatoes for planting.
• How and When to Plant Potatoes This post is full of helpful tips that will make growing bucket potatoes a breeze!
• How to Grow Potatoes in Buckets Read about how to cut the potatoes apart and let them heal before planting.

Harvest Time

When you harvest potatoes in a garden, you usually use some sort of potato or pitch fork to bring the potatoes up to the surface.  There is no way to know where the potato tubers are going to be, so you most likely will stab some potatoes with the fork. Unfortunately, when that happens, you end up losing those potatoes.  When harvesting a bucket of potatoes, however, you just dump it out on a tarp and pick up the potatoes. No potatoes are damaged and there’s no back-breaking digging involved!  Check out these five blog articles that explain all of the harvesting details.

• Growing Potatoes in Buckets or Trash Cans You’ll know it’s time to harvest the plants when they turn yellow or brown and dry up.
• Potato Farm Learn about harvest yields in this blog article.
• How to Plant “Irish” Potatoes This post is all about harvesting “Irish” potatoes.
• My Garden: Potato Bucket Yield This blogger describes how many potatoes she got out of her buckets of potatoes.
• Growing Potatoes in a Bucket This post is full of helpful tips, like how important it is to let your newly harvested potatoes dry before storing them.

Tips & Tricks

To perfect growing potatoes in a bucket, you’ll need plenty of tips and tricks, such as making sure that the soil you use in your buckets contains manure. The nutrients in manure will help your potato plants grow and produce a larger crop than if you just used plain garden soil.  The five blog posts below will explain various tips and tricks for growing potatoes in a bucket.

• Growing Potatoes in Containers Learn about the various containers you can use to grow potatoes in and how you can prevent spreading disease by planting potatoes in a bucket.
• Growing Potatoes is Easy and Fun Find out how to fertilize your potato plants once they are in the bucket in this post.
• Potatoes are Planted—What Could Go Wrong Now?  Potatoes in a Bucket! Read about how you can prevent diseases and bugs from getting your potato plants in this post.
• How to Grow Potatoes: Organic Growing, Diseases, Harvesting, Storing Once you grow your potatoes, you need to know how to store them so that they don’t rot. Find out how by reading the post from this blogger!
• How to Grow a Great Potato This blog post contains a chart that can help you learn about which potatoes to plant and when you can harvest them.