If your soil is a little acidic, don’t worry. Organic material also attracts soil organisms such as beneficial bacteria and earthworms. It also adds organic material to soil, which helps with watering (sandy soil retains more water, while clay soil drains better).
It also makes is easy to quarantine a group of plants if disease should take hold in one bucket.Īged compost (or manure) will add nutrients and organic material to improve your soil for growing potatoes.Īged compost or manure add nutrients to soil, which helps to restore what last year’s plants used up. Wider buckets will be able to hold more plants, but having several smaller buckets makes each one easier to move. If you have a deeper bucket, leave a little more space at the bottom for soil, or leave a little more space at the top for hilling (or both!) Hilling just means piling up soil around the base of the plants as they grow (more detail on hilling later!) Top 6 inches: this layer is used for hilling the potato plants.I recommend burying potatoes 4 inches deep, but you can go shallower if you want, since you will be hilling up the plants later in the season. Next 4 inches: this layer of soil is used to bury the potatoes.The potatoes themselves will rest on top of this layer. The roots of your plants will move into this layer to get nutrients and water, and 4.5 inches will leave enough room for growth. Bottom 4.5 inches: this is where you will put the “base layer” of soil mix for your potatoes.
#Planting buckets how to
Here is my recommendation for how to use the space in a standard size 5 gallon bucket: This should leave you enough room for growing potatoes, but more depth will not hurt.Ī 5 gallon bucket will work well for 1 or 2 potato plants. However, if the soil stays wet for too long, your potato plants could get root rot.Ī standard size 5 gallon bucket is about 14.5 inches tall. Remember: you can always add more water to the bucket if the soil gets dry. A power drill works well for drilling drainage holes in plastic buckets (the hole saw attachment will be helpful). Whichever bucket you choose, you will need to put some holes in the bottom to improve drainage. For another thing, you will need some extra depth in the bucket so you have space to “hill up” potato plants later in the season (more on this later). There are lots of different buckets you can choose from, but don’t pick a shallow bucket.įor one thing, potato tubers grow underground. No matter where you get your sprouted potatoes from, you will need a place to plant them.
(If you growing tomatoes in the same garden area, choose blight-resistant tomato varieties as well, since both types of blight can spread between tomatoes and potatoes).
You can find certified disease-free seed potatoes from reputable seed and plant companies such as: This alone may be worth the extra cost, since plant diseases can linger in the soil for years.
#Planting buckets free
Seed potatoes will sprout sooner than store bought ones so you can start planting earlier.Ĭertified disease free seed potatoes will not spread blight or other potato problems to your garden.
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