Can You Grow Potatoes in a Bucket?

Emergency Preparedness, gardening in small spaces, gardening in the city, Growing food in small spaces
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Growing food can insulate you from a food crisis, so I always recommend that my readers learn to grow food, even if the only space is a small balcony or patio.  One of the projects I have always wondered about was whether it is possible to grow potatoes in a bucket. (Note:  If you live in an upper floor and plan to grow plants in buckets outside in your balcony, pay attention to weight restrictions on your lease, and consider how much weight you are adding to your balcony in addition to what you already have in there.)

One of my colleagues over at Prepared Bloggers, Kamay Flemens who writes Homeschooling the Well Prepared Child, tried growing potatoes in a bucket.  Check out the first article in the series:  Growing Tators in Buckets.   Read her article below on how it turned out.

 

Potato Bucket Reveal

Written by Kamay Flemens

This post originally appeared in Homeschooling the Well Prepared Child

This post contains Affiliate Links.

     It has been some time since I posted an update on our potato bucket. The first Potato Bucket did not go so well. Due to human error, it ended up being a big FAIL. We refused to give up, so we started again. This time, our bucket would be left completely outdoors. It grew rather quickly.
     Suddenly, it was a big, giant, beautiful plant! We were so excited to finally have a bit of success with this project. Sometime after this photo was taken, some strange red beetles we have never seen before, decided to eat most of the plant. I asked Mike to get us some DE to put on the plant to hopefully get rid of the pesky beetles. It did not work as well as I would have liked, however, most of the bugs did disappear for a couple of days. The damage was already done, and my beautiful plant was not so beautiful anymore. Also, it seemed to have developed some sort of fungus that looks a lot like THIS.
     So by that time, we figured it was time to see what we had grown. I am not video editing savvy, Zoey is a little nervous and after 5 tries, this is the best video we got! 😀 I also realized I have two YouTube channels. One in my own name, and one under the blogs name.. go figure!
So… Take 5 Zoey!  Your line is…
     So how do we like growing potatoes in buckets now? Still on the fence. This try went better than the last, but still not a great yield. I think I am going to wait and see how the potatoes in the garden grew before I make my decision.
About the author:
Kamay Flemens writes  Homeschooling the Well Prepared Child.  She homeschools her daughter, Zoey 10 and have one already grown and out on his own, Alex 18.  She teaches homesteading, survivalist and life skills right along with her regular core curriculum.  She believes it is a lost art and necessary in these times.   She and her husband are amateur preppers who believe prepping should begin with a debt free, frugal, live within your means lifestyle.   You can visit her site at Homeschooling the Well Prepared Child.


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4 comments

  1. Pingback: Prepper News Watch for August 17, 2015 | The Preparedness Podcast

  2. Excellent tutorial … you can grow a lot of things in small spaces like a bucket. Just be careful, certain variety of potatoes like to spread so they are not ideal for a bucket. Be sure to pick varieties that grow in bunches, sort of bush like.

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  3. I learned a great trick from Mavis Butterfield at onehundreddollarsamonth.gmail.com. take a piece of duct tape and wrap on your fingers with the sticky side out. Use the sticky part to trap the buggers on the tape, pressing with your fingers on the leaves. It works amazing, especially on the eggs. Squash bugs can’t seem to get out of the stickiness though the potato bugs seem to have to be wrapped in it to keep them from escaping. What a great feeling to see your plants without the usual leaves missing! What kind of soil did you use? We put kiddie pools on top of pallets to keep the moles/voles out, but don’t get as good a harvest as we’d like.

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  4. A handy option if you are stuck for growing space in the ground or have a paved garden area or balcony but the yield is a bit light.

    I suppose its worth it as they look after themselves (if you treat the beetles or other pests that want to munch on the leaves) and any additional food source no matter how small is always a good thing in times of crisis…

    Cheers

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